


North Star

by magnetar



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst, Betrayal, Hux is Not Nice, Hux is a mess, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 06:53:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16131950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetar/pseuds/magnetar
Summary: After the First Order is defeated because Kylo Ren has changed sides, Rey and General Organa agree that death is too easy for Hux. Instead they exile him to a deserted planet in the Outer Rim with enough supplies to grow and hunt for his own food and a small shack to live in, where he will be forgotten by the Galaxy and live out a long and insignificant life - the worst possible fate for someone as ambitious and insecure as Hux. In time Kylo follows to explain himself and try to heal the wounds between them. Hux doesn't know if he can trust Kylo again after all he's done, even if his heart wants to.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So finally here is my fic for the Kylux Mini Bang 2018! It was amazing to work with the super talented [Pandalolli](https://pandalolli.tumblr.com/), so please check out her art! Thank you so much for all of your help and your words of encouragement <3

The silence and stillness are oppressive after so much activity, challenging anyone to break them. Even Hux is held still by the moment, turned into a silent observer as he gazes at the planet below – where it had all started and now where it has all ended. The barrage has stopped, the great cannons lay silent and the planet beneath is still. The plumes of dust disturbed by the explosions and clouding Hux’s view of the planet’s surface, could now be mistaken for the swirling clouds of a storm – impressive but far less deadly than their true origin. The quiet lays heavily over the bridge of the Finalizer, as if the entire crew is collectively holding their breath for something, some kind of signal for them to burst into life again.

  
It’s not what Hux had expected at all. Although, now that the moment is here, he can’t think of any other way that he would want it. Fanfare and drama would no doubt be impressive but this awed silence, Hux thinks, has the dignity of something that will go down in history. A story that will be told in hushed whispers across the galaxy.

  
‘Grand Marshall Hux,’ they will say, ‘he was the one who defeated them. He was the one who brought order to the galaxy, who fixed the disaster left by the New Republic.’ A shiver of pleasure runs through him, down his spine and to his fingertips, as his lips pull up into a smirk. Overdramatic maybe but Hux has always loved a show and being the centre of attention, feeling people’s gaze roaming over his skin.

  
Finally, he lists off some hasty commands to his lieutenant – a pretty, bright, young thing who keeps his thoughts to himself and reminds him just a little too much of Mitaka. ‘Capture the General, Organa and the girl,’ he says in hushed tones, loathe to break the atmosphere of the occasion. He purses his lips, turning away before the thought strikes him. ‘And those troublemakers. The Traitor and the Pilot. If they are alive make sure they stay that way,’ he hisses as the Lieutenant snaps to attention, disappearing across the bridge to his own console.

  
Hux knows there are, of course, more steps to go through than this. While the Resistance had exploded into a supernova – an admirable death, at least, the New Republic was stagnating and rotting, bloating even as its light slowly dimmed. He stares down at the planet through the viewport, unable to look away from his victory. Taking the New Republic would be easy after this.   


‘Sir,’ Phasma’s voice cuts through the silence, and he reluctantly turns his gaze away from his victory, finding his old friends face. “There’s a communication on the subspace channel for you. It’s Kylo Ren, on the surface. He’s demanding to speak to you.’

  
Hux’s heart jumps, the shock like cold ice slipping down his back and he wonders at himself. He must keep control of his features, he thinks, because Phasma merely stares back at him, the same expression of measured blankness in the slant of her eyebrows and line of the mouth, even as her eyes sparkle. But it’s the strangest feeling, throwing Hux completely off balance as if he is stood at a cliff edge, staring down past his boots to the rocks below. There is a wrongness to it – he knows with the same certainty that Arkanis’ twin suns set over the horizon each and every night, that Ren shouldn’t be waiting to speak to him on subspace from the planet, despite the fact that he’d seen Ren just hours before as he’d walked to his shuttle, sabre at his hip.

  
‘I’ll take it at my console,’ he replies finally, wanting a little privacy between them. It’s not that he thinks Ren will say anything scandalous, even if he hopes he will, despite what they do in Hux’s quarters during the night cycle Ren has never treated him with a molecule of softness or even recognition, outside of those times. But Hux aches, a physical pain in his chest, to speak to him. Again, he reminds himself, illogical. He’d seen Ren only hours before and here he is so desperate to speak to him.

  
But, the more he thinks about it the more everything feels wrong. Even Phasma, his most trusted ally, a dear friend even – it feels like she shouldn’t be there, even though the bridge of the Finalizer and at his side, is the very place that she should be.

 

Compelled by something he can’t explain, the wrongness that invades every part of him, Hux reaches out to her with one gloved hand, her name on the tip of his tongue. Where his fingertips should meet the cold metal of her armour, Phasma slips through his fingers like a ghost. He gasps, stomach turning at the horror as the console at his side crackles into life, it’s screen filled with static until a figure appears with dark hair and equally dark robes.

  
‘Hux.’

  
***   
The tapping on his roof wakes him up, gasping for breath and reaching automatically for the cool stone of the necklace where it hangs around the bedpost next to his head. The bed cold except where he sleeps, as it always is now, but he finds himself disappointed anyway. He runs his fingers down the chain until he finds the stone, threading it between his fingers and letting his eyes slip closed again as the tapping continues.

 

The dream flows from his thoughts like he’s trying to catch water between his fingers, slipping away before he can process it as he begins to remember where he is. But one image sticks with him, that dark figure and the voice calling out his name across the depths of space – crackling and filled with pain in a way Hux can’t explain. Like it didn’t belong with the rest of the dream. The noise above his head on the roof gets louder, followed by piercing squawking before there’s silence again.

 

‘Just birds,’ he sighs in relief as he pushes himself upright swings his legs from beneath the thin sheet and onto the worn wooden floorboards. Still, his heart pounds in his chest and his breath rattles a staccato rhythm as he hauls himself to his feet, inspecting the damage.

 

His sheet is soaked through with sweat, the sight and feel turning his stomach. It will need to be washed, he thinks clinically as he starts to strip the bed in military fashion, except that he’s running low on water – the tank below the hut is only a third full, with no rain in sight. The lake where he can wash his clothes and get extra water is 8 Klicks away, but it takes him almost 2 hours to walk there in the midday heat. So for the moment Hux simply folds the sheet up and places it his haphazard laundry pile. He will have to make do, he supposes.

He’s been learning to make do a lot, recently.

 

The bathroom is simple – housed in a tiny offshoot of the main building, with stone flooring that is refreshingly cool to the touch. It reminds him of Arkanis a bit, of the house he grew up in. Although that isn’t exactly a comforting thought. Brendol Hux’s house was large and grand, but empty and freezing even in the depths of summer.  Hux shivers at the memory, the stone rough beneath his feet.

 

The bathroom itself is simple and good enough, Hux supposes, for most. A simple tap and sink rise out of the floor against one wall with a mirror above it – slightly clouded and chipped around the edges, wooden cabinet in one corner and a drain in the other.

 

He strips off his clothes with long-practised military precision, folding the beige tunic carefully and placing it on the cabinet. There are no laundry droids here, not even an old-fashioned iron or trouser press, so he is extra careful to fold his meagre supply of tunics ‘just so’ and to dry them laid flat out in the midday heat, to avoid any crumples.

 

He moves more carefully when removing the necklace – a simple chain with a small, round and red stone hanging from it. He stares at it for a few moments, as the stone twists slowly on the end of the chain, consumed by the strange possessive feelings that rise in his chest at the sight of it – at the memories of who had given it to him.

 

He can picture it as clearly as if it is happening at that moment; the hands, large, warm and work-roughened had pressed the necklace to his chest, the warmth from the palm seeping through Hux’s tunic to his skin – hot and intimate, as a blush had bloomed across his cheeks. The memory stings and he drops the necklace without a thought.

 

The bucket is cold to the touch as he holds in beneath the tap until it is full with equally cold water. Hux tries to focus on the patter of the water against the side of the bucket but his thoughts are dragged back to the past. He misses the vibrations running across his skin, the truly clean feeling that could only come from a Sonic Shower and feels a kind of pathetic, shaking sadness grip him deep in his bones. But equally, there is a fire burning in his chest that is so powerful he wonders if he has eaten something bad. Determination that is thick and immovable; Hux knows he will stand in a sonic shower again in his private quarters, aboard the starship that he commands.

 

Even if his dream weren’t how things had turned out in reality, he will rule the galaxy – one way or another. The thoughts have a weight to them, Hux’s ambition and determination are unshakeable even when his foundations crumble; this is what has sustained him. He scrubs at his skin until it turns pink with tight, regular motions and stares at the blank wall opposite – at the patch of damp that will soon be evaporated by the heat and the swirling grain of the wood.

 

_‘My parents had to live like that,’ one of his captors had said as she’d bundled him along by a grip on the back of his tunic, removing the blindfold from his eyes and the gag from his mouth, as he hadn’t been permitted to know where they were taking him. The gag, on the other hand, hadn’t been required, but they preferred that he didn’t talk._

 

_‘They were slaves under the Empire,’ she had continued and Hux had felt her grip tighten around the fabric, dragging it harshly across his skin. ‘They were taken from their families and their home, given a hovel to live in,’ by then they’d been coming over the swell of a dune, and down towards the little stone hut that would become Hux’s shelter. ‘They didn’t even have running water. You deserve far worse than this, I would kill you myself if General Organa and Rey hadn’t forbidden it. You’re disgusting,’ she’d lifted him with one arm, all five and a half feet of her, so that she could look him in the eye._

 

_He had smirked back and had seen the anger in her eyes double, even as inside he was paralyzed with terror._

 

_‘You’re wrong,’ he’d hissed, still smirking even as she’d slapped him across the face – hard enough to scratch a jagged, bleeding mark across his lip. They were all wrong, the damned Resistance. He was a prisoner, captured by the enemy. He’d killed thousands, millions even and they all believed that a lifetime of exile was too soft a punishment, too easy a way out for him. And in their blindness, their misguided kindness even to their enemy they had created a prison, a torture that Hux simply could not bear. To be useless, a failure, to be forgotten – that was worse than death._

 

Hux can feel the prickle of midday heat already, as he thumbs at the scar thoughtfully, the beads of sweat rolling down the nape of his neck just beneath his hairline. He moves to the cabinet and pulls on his discarded tunic and necklace, running his hands over the coarse fabric as if to remove unseen wrinkles before reaching into one of the drawers. He fumbles for a moment, hand brushing against the smooth wood before he finds the little metal box.

 

Even though the hinge protests, he manages to pop open the lid with the gentle press of his thumbs. The Resistance had given him few items when he’d been abandoned here, only the bare minimum that he needs to survive, but still, the wash bag had been sitting there on the rickety table – plain and perfectly ordinary looking. Inside, however, lived the tools of the General. The thoughts come to him unprompted, of Ren sneering at his vanity and plucking the tools from his hands, sliding his hands over his shoulders and biting kisses down the exposed column of Hux’s neck…

 

The razor glides across his skin with practised strokes, gripped between the tips of his fingers of one hand while the other grips his chin. He stares at himself in the mirror, preening under his own gaze as he transforms back into himself. First the prickly beginnings of stubble, then he moves onto his hair – passing the gel through his hair with the swift motions of his comb. He watches the pale, limp hair and his scruffy jaw neatened and ordered until Hux is the General again – not the same as he once was, scars mottle his cheek and pulls up the bow of his lip, and his skin has darkened slightly in the blazing sun.

 

His breakfast is courtesy of the Food Synthesizer – plain oatmeal, as always. His own efforts with his small garden aren’t enough to fully sustain him and all of the little beasties he’s seen scuttling from one patch of shade to another since he’s been there, are strange hairless things that are stringy and chewy no matter if he roasts or boils their meat. The Synthesizer also doesn’t supply his favourite Stims, or any stims at all, Hux’s usual breakfast of choice.  

 

He eats quickly, not bothering to savour the taste, the oatmeal sitting warm and sticky on his tongue for only a few seconds. He misses the cold burn of the stim pill, the instant buzz he feels at the back of his skull and the way his limbs feeling like their shaking, near bursting with energy, to cover the void of tiredness lodged between his ribs. The oatmeal only leaves him with a foreign taste in his mouth, laying heavily in his stomach.

 

He swipes up the last few oats with his spoon, before getting up to put the bowl in to soak in the rusting kitchen sink. He’s learnt the hard way that he can’t leave his dishes just laying around after the first day when he’d left a plate with bread crumbs on the low wooden table only to return to a trail of ants leading from a crack in the wall of the hut, across the floor, up the table leg and onto his plate. He’d made sure to wash up quickly and not spill anything after that.

 

He spends the rest of the morning outside in the blazing sun with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow and fingertips stained with soil, the dirt sticking beneath his nails and the sun beating down on his back. The garden is small, a tiny carefully tended square of soil divided into neat sections at the front of the house, encased within a clear bio-dome to stop the crops from drying up in the heat. Hux had long ago switched off the watering feature, preferring to tend them himself, enjoying the way he can exert order of this little thing.   

 

Where he had used to laugh at Phasma and Ren’s appetite for exercise, he feels like he understands now. The work calms him, lets him exist in the physical only, the sweat the forms on his forehead and underneath his arms, and the ache in his shoulders – watering from a small and rusting can, fertilising the soil, planting new seeds and harvesting the current crop. Still, he feels the prickle of tears at the corners of his eyes as he plucks the plump berries from the planet, purple juice shooting across the muddy tips of his fingers, at the memory of them, both of them. How dare they abandon him – Phasma in death and Kylo in his betrayal.

 

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he thinks, blinking back the self-pitying tears that he can feel gathering at the corners of his eyes and replacing them with a spark of anger that ignites in his chest, ‘it doesn’t matter. I will be the Supreme Leader again, I will be the Emperor of the Galaxy without them. Everything will be right again. I will win.’

 

He swipes the little wicker basket filled with berries, up with one hand and stomps inside, taking great pleasure at how the dust and sand is kicked up behind him. It’s childish but extremely satisfying and after all, there’s nobody else to see him so he can indulge himself.

 

However, despite his self-indulgence he still has to devote at least some of his thoughts to menial jobs – remembering to eat 3 meals a day, to set the remainder of the berries aside to make jam, but mostly Hux’s attention is still on his work, his endless planning and schemes. He pretends that he’s sitting in his office on the Finalizer, space spreading out before him through the viewport reflected in the shiny black of his desk as he rubs his finger carefully against the crumpled edge of the paper.

 

He’s not used to the feel of a pencil in his hand, the First Order using only viewscreens that responded to the movements of his fingertips or at least signing his name with a stylus. It had been hard to get the pressure right to start with – first he’d pressed so lightly that the pencil had barely left a mark and then so heavily that the led had almost snapped in half. He’d almost thrown the pencil across the room until the familiarity had tugged at his heart; a figure in dark robes throwing a droid that had displeased him across the room, turning to Hux and pulling him close, burning up with his feeling as the heat of his hand burnt through Hux’s tunic. Hux had picked the pencil back up and headed outside.

 

His hand was shaking after the first session of mapping, neatly drawing in the constellations that he could see but Hux had felt a feeling welling within his chest that night, lifting him above the pain. The accomplishment was addicting, his escape seeming so close he could touch it.

The plan is simple enough, at least to start with. The Resistance may have won the war, they may have defeated and captured him even but the First Orders roots go deeper than that, Hux’s influence stretches across the Galaxy.

 

It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that the Field Generator that stopped any communications from going in or out of the planet as well as disabling any ships that crossed it, leaving them useless and apparently making his escape impossible, could be shut down and repurposed to send subspace messages to his contact.

 

And it had been easy to rewire the generator and to shut it down whenever he pleased for short periods, without alerting the Resistance. All that he needed to do now was work out the rough coordinates for his planet and his contact had promised to send a transport for him. He smirks to himself. The Resistance had underestimated him once again.

 

Which leaves him with the hardest part. He scoops a handful of berries into his mouth, chewing them slowly as he gazes at the haphazard map. The skies of Arkanis were beautiful – dark and filled with twinkling stars and swirling nebulas. Armitage had known by name, straight from the bluish glow of the astronomical holobook in his room. As he had learnt their names, more and more stars and solar systems and nebulas and planets, Armitage had found a kind of peace. The Universe that had seemed so chaotic, so cold and lonely like Arkanis had become ordered and safe. But here he’s lost, even with his knowledge, he still needs to find a point of reference - a North Star.

 

Slowly, a sound catches his attention as it gets louder and louder, tearing his attention away from the chart – a high-pitched buzzing like the whirr of a ships hyperdrive. The hit of adrenaline is instant, he feels it tingling through his fingers and his heart pounding in his chest at the familiar sound – something he has heard from birth, a worn and well-loved sound that brings him nothing but fear now.

 

Assassins. Their ships closing in.

 

He scrambles to the window, pressing his face like a child against the dirty pane, the adrenaline sweeping away his usual aversion to dirt – the germs and stains it could cause, as he searches the skies with quick even sweeps of his eyes. His scars itch. The skies are clear as always, burnt off by the heat and without rain due for another week; he’s taken to marking the date off his calendar, going through right to the end with the stub of his pencil, a pathetically domestic weakness – as if he believes he will be here for long enough to need such information.  

The sound is so loud and sudden that the whole of the hut shakes, glass creaking in its crumbling frame against Hux’s cheek. His eyes seek out the source and find it immediately – a small ship, sleek and black is plummeting from the sky, smoke streaming from its engine vents towards a dune less than one Klick from the hut. The ship changes from a tiny speck that Hux would’ve mistaken for a smudge of dirt on the glass, to a visible ship – sleek and black and nothing like the rust buckets he’s seen the assassin’s using before.

 

Still, he can’t believe that it would be anyone else Hux thinks as he ducks below the frame of the window. The impact is so loud that the hut shakes around him again – knocking over a chair and spilling the berries over the table top.

 

After the tremors have stopped, Hux knows what he has to do. The Resistance, of course, haven’t supplied him with any weapons – even his kitchen knives and pruning shears are blunted, so he has to use whatever he can. Despite the past Assassin’s all having been armed with blasters strapped to their sides, Hux has been able to overpower each one of them with his combat training that was required in the First Order’s Academy (or perhaps, that the Assassin’s hadn’t actually been trying to kill him and instead capture him – no doubt to sell him or return him to their leader, before he was kill. But Hux pushes that nagging thought away. It was obviously just his own skill, not anything else…).

 

He moves as quickly as he can, getting to his feet and pushing out through the door into the mid-afternoon sun. He shields his eyes from the brightness but doesn’t stop, taking the familiar route to the tool shed and slipping his hand inside until he feels the familiar smoothness of the blaster against his palm. The first Assassin that had landed obviously hadn’t been expecting or prepared for the field generator, their ship had crashed like all the others and the Assassin had been killed. Hux had been able to salvage the old-fashioned blaster, a few ration packets and a partial star chart that he was now filling in, when the ships fires had died down. Then the irony was clear to him; the generator was both his captor and protector.

 

After that it seemed after that, that whoever was sending these Assassin’s had at least learned not to underestimate Hux, sending them in greater numbers and with better weapons than this lone bounty hunter. Hux pulls the blaster out of the shed swiftly, gripping around the handle before heading across the sand towards the plumes of smoke from the crash. Hux knows he has to strike before the Assassins can understand their surroundings if they have survived the crash at all, so that he will have some advantage over them.

 

Sweat pools – sticky and uncomfortable, underneath his arms and across his back where the sun hits his skin as he reaches the edge of the dune. His booted feet slip in the sand, sinking and sliding as he tries to scale the slope and sending him to his knees. The humiliation is almost too much to bear, having to crawl, panting, sweating, covered in sand and dishevelled up the dune to fight off his attackers, wielding only an old-fashioned, barely functional blaster. At that moment, Hux truly feels how far he has fallen, wishes more than anything for the carefully controlled temperature and filtered air of the Finalizer, for his spotless uniform and underlings to do his dirty work for him.

 

Kriff, at this point even a sonic shower would be like a utopia to him.

 

But despite the pain it brings, the memory also gives him strength. He will be there again, he knows, the feeling rising with the anger thrumming through his veins. He will stand aboard the bridge of a new ship – bigger and better, as its commander, as the leader of a new order and everything will be as it should be. He picks himself back up, the sand slipping from his tunic pants, and breaks into a run, scrambling up the dune and tightening his grip on the blaster.

Finally, he reaches the top of the dune and pears down into the valley below. The wreckage lays near to where Hux stands at the bottom of the dune, still smoking. The ship is crumpled at the front from the impact – the slick black metal of the bow is crushed inwards, revealing the hyperdrive and wiring beneath. He thinks he recognises it, the shape streamlined and stylish unlike the rust buckets the other Assassin’s had flown – this ship was something expensive, something personal. It’s like a ghost flickering just beyond his perception, but can’t place from where – flashes of black and red behind his eyelids. He crouches down where he is, waiting for any sign of movement before he strikes.

 

A head emerges and Hux tightens his grip around the blaster, keeping up his pace towards the smoking wreckage. He knows he can’t slow down for a second, can’t let the Assassin recover from the crash, he has to strike hard and fast while he is still weakened. But as he gets closer and the figure pulls themselves fully from the wreckage, and for some reason Hux is reminded of his dream, the figure trying to reach out to him.

 

Their hair is long and dark, mostly secured at the back of the man’s head in a loose bun with a few waves curling delicately around the man’s face. Hux’s breath catches for a moment, the air around him thick with the smell of burning metal, at the sight – at the strange familiarity of it, that takes him back to another place in an instant.

 

_They stand side by side on the bridge staring out into the depths of space; they don’t say a word to each other, but it’s enough. They are in his bed, his true bed, the sheets crumpled around them and Kylo’s big hand is wrapped around his cock – his strokes are slow and warm, leaving Hux begging for more and moaning into Kylo’s shoulder. They shout at each other, Kylo screaming into his face before pushing past him, checking his shoulder and Hux feels the burn of anger in his cheeks in equal doses as the spark of lust, the push and pull between them._

 

He comes back to himself in an instant, forcing the memories from his mind. Kylo is gone. Hux knows that he is. Kylo had betrayed him, betrayed the First Order and joined the Resistance, to be with the girl. What they had, what small thing was between them, what Hux had thought they had had was nothing to Kylo, it seemed. It can’t be him, why would he be here?

 

The man struggles as Hux watches from halfway down the slope, finally managing to drag himself clear of the crash site and collapses flat onto his face in the sand. Now Hux can see he’s wearing soft, pale beige robes, belted around his waist – not the usual dark robes and heavy armour that the Assassins have worn. Slowly, as Hux reaches the bottom of the slope, he sees the man struggle to his feet and feels his heart pound once behind his ribs, desperate and disbelieving.

 

It’s Ren.

They stare at each other wordlessly, Hux can’t tear his eyes away, doesn’t even know how much time passes. It feels like forever and no time at all, it stretches out between them like the Universe itself is warping between their two points. Hux can’t feel the heat of the sun burning through his tunic and onto the skin of his back, his feet sinking into the sand, can’t feel any of it.

Ren looks different. His hair is longer of course and his clothes are different, but now that they’re facing each other Hux can see the scar that split’s Kylo’s face in two has turned from a fresh angry red to a pale pink. It’s more than that though, something that Hux can’t put his finger on. Ren’s entire demeanour has changed, little details that Hux thinks only he would notice – the way Ren holds himself or doesn’t, curling inwards upon himself instead of his old confident stance, his dark eyes unfocused.

The calm settles over him like a cloud, as he blinks languidly, the pieces sliding horrifically into place. He’d almost forgotten with the shock – of seeing Ren alive and well, thriving even, why he had rushed here. He realises it isn’t calm, but a twisted sense of dread that has filled him – it’s inevitable after all. Ren’s eyes are filled with sadness, brimming with crocodile tears. The emotion surprises him, the depth of it staring him in the face. Ren is here to kill him.

It all makes sense really, Hux decides as he swallows thickly, that Ren would be the one to do it. A cruel slip of fate and a calculated decision all in one. Ren is best suited to the task after all, even if Hux doesn’t put any faith in the mythical nonsense, he can still see how powerful Ren is with the Force.

‘Let the past die. Kill it if you have to,’ a voice echoes in his head, deep and raspy, as if it can barely speak. The necklace burns wear it touches his skin.

He tries to tell himself that it doesn’t hurt, this final and absolute betrayal. That it gives him strength, like his father’s hatred of him, the loneliness that bored into his soul and the cruel looks of the other Officers. He almost believes it.

Finally, Ren opens his mouth as if he’s about to speak. Hux already knows what Ren is going to say, what he has always called him, he can see it on the tip of his tongue. He waits for it, for Ren to say it, flinching away as if from a physical blow. General. The word hurts him now, more deadly than any blaster wound. But so does Armitage, to be just Armitage, simple Armitage, is unbearable. That would truly be the worst death, to be reduced to just a feeble Armitage; to Ren of all people. He waits for it, Ren is that cruel after all.

‘Hux,’ Ren breathes as if the word is a prayer – quiet and careful as it passes his lips, like he can’t quite believe he’s saying it. On some level Hux is aware of himself; can hear the blood rushing in his ears in time with the frantic pound of his heart in his chest, and the rattle of his breath as it passes between chapped lips, but that word takes him to somewhere else.

 _Hux_. He remembers that was what Kylo had said to him in the dream, shrouded in pain and shadows. The blaster slips from his hand with a dull clatter, he hardly hears it hit the sand, unable to tear his eyes away from the man in front of him as his hand clutches desperately at the chain around his neck.

Kylo Ren. It’s really him.

It’s almost too much to bear, he feels like his mind is being torn in two – as Kylo had so often complained about himself. The pieces, the sides, are nowhere near equal; his anger burns white hot fuelled by his embarrassment and betrayal, while the relief of seeing Kylo is a small fragile thing, shaking within his chest

Or so Hux tells himself.

‘Ren,’ he grits out, voice dripping with the fury he feels – at Ren’s balls to so much as speak to him again, but also at the traitorous flutter in his own pathetic heart at the sight of Ren again and the flame of passion that threatens to bloom hot and red across his cheeks.

It’s always been like this, after all, this dance between them that has no name. There is no give and take, no push and pull, only push push push push until they are both used up. They shout, scream, argue and fight and fall into bed. They hate each other even as their touches say the opposite.

Kylo’s hand slips along the hinge of his jaw before his fingers curl up into Hux’s hair, as their lips meet – brushing at first with the lightest touch before Kylo deepens it, licking his way into Hux’s mouth with broad strokes.

Hux feels himself pushing back, _needs more and harder_ , nipping at Kylo’s lips with the barest hint of teeth but the promise of more if he misbehaves, and slips his hands up Ren’s arms – as thick and strong as ever, grasping just below his shoulders with hungry, roaming fingers. It’s too much – the memories and the anger and the want, and yet not enough at the same time. He moans before he can stop himself, so wanton how humiliating, into Kylo’s mouth at just the brush of their tongues.

He can’t help but compare it to before, what feels like years but can only be months, the soft fabric beneath his palms compared to the tough, ruched fabric of Ren’s tunic. It’s certainly gentler on his hands but he can’t help but find himself missing the burn, greedy as always. And Kriff, he’s missed Kylo as much as he hates him. As much as Kylo has betrayed him. It hurts.

Hux feels like his burning up – the sun against his back and Kylo, hot and heavy, pressed against his front, and his anger and his want burning him from the inside.

 

They break apart both breathing heavily, Ren stumbling back a few steps away from him. He knows that his hair is a mess, can feel the strands breaking loose of their neat, slicked back order and falling across his face, and that his lips must be puffy and red from the kiss, but still he schools his features into controlled mask even as the panic settles into his gut. And when he finally looks up he sees that his fears were right. Kylo is staring back at him wide eyed and slack-jawed. In horror, Hux’s mind supplies helpfully.

He turns on his heel, towards the hut and the sunset that has been their backdrop, walking with quick measured steps – order in all things even as he feels like his little world is falling apart, towards the Hut. Towards safety. He ignores the cries that follow him, Ren calling out his name pitifully like the bleats of a wounded animal.

‘Feel nothing,’ he repeats to himself like a mantra, even as he feels everything from the grains of sand in his boots to the ache in his heart. He slams the door behind him, the bang a small comfort to him and finally breathes.

‘He left you,’ he whispers to himself, scrubbing his shaking hands, ‘he abandoned you. He betrayed you.’ And he knows can’t risk it again. But at the same time, Ren had obviously not been there to kill him – even without a weapon it would’ve been easy for him to reach out with the Force, to grasp around Hux’s throat and choke the life from him as he had almost done in the tattered remains of Snoke’s throne room. Yet, here he is, unharmed.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

Hux blinks awake with a groan, pulled out of the blissful dream – where the Finalizer had been firm and real underneath his booted feet, and back to the cold and dark of his reality. He hadn’t expected, having only known Arkanis and deep space, the coldness of the night. It contrasted the day so much that, at first, he’d hardly been able to bear it – from sweating enough to drench his clothes and feeling a bit like an overcooked piece of Gizka steak, to huddled beneath his blanket shivering so hard he was afraid he would break his teeth. Which, while they could be repaired in time, would not help his image right now.

It’s not birds this time, but a gnawing emptiness in his stomach that’s woken him up. He rolls over, pushing further underneath his covers away from the cold, his mind still slow and sleepy. He blinks once, twice into the darkness before closing his eyes again as he notices the rain. The sound of it hitting the roof that he’d once been able to tune out as background noise is suddenly unbearable to him, the wet and musty scent of it thick in the air.

He tosses and turns for a few more moments, just to be stubborn, before sighing and sliding out from beneath the blanket, and pads across the room to the Food Synthesizer. He keys in the access codes, listening idly to the crash of rain still pouring against the roof. It will save him from a trip to the lake for now, at least. A small stack of plain crackers appears at the base of the Synthesizer and he takes them to eat at the kitchen table, consuming them with quick but measured bites – carefully controlled, a need that must be satisfied rather than a pleasure.

He’d been feeling nothing, an inescapable numbness since he’d… since Ren and him… His forehead smacks loudly into his palms, and a shuddering breath forces its way through his clenched teeth. But worst of all it’s not misery that fills him, only another wave of emptiness and he moans into his fist.

From somewhere, quiet and muffled, so that Hux barely catches there's a sound. But still it settles like ice in his veins, and he feels himself freeze. A cough, quiet as if it had been muffled into a hand or clothing.

Somehow between the memories and the rush of feelings – the sting of hurt still fresh, he’d forgotten that Ren was even there, that Ren was also stranded and hurting. While Hux had sat in bed feeling sorry for himself – reading a novel and picking at his dinner of rehydrated bread and a steaming mug of Caf, Kylo had been sat outside fixing his ship, moving across the desert. Waiting for Hux.

Still, Hux can’t find it in himself to feel bad for it. ‘It’s as much,’ he thinks, ‘as Ren deserves.’

Even so, the thought nags at the corner of his mind as he chews over the last few mouthfuls of crackers with a lot less enthusiasm than before. Without thinking Hux finds himself moving towards the door, towards where he knows Ren is.

At first, he can’t see anything as the night has settled thickly around the hut, but slowly his eyes begin to adjust and he can pick out the shape, curled inwards upon himself at the edge of the porch. The shoulders are broad and he can make out just the hint of the slope of the bun Ren now seems to wear his hair in, strands fanning out at the nape of his neck. But Ren is silent now, even as Hux sees the gentle movement of Ren’s shoulders – the cough that had escaped must’ve been a one-off, Ren desperate to cover it up.

Refusing to show any sign of weakness. Hux finds himself smirking, despite the way the rest of him still feels filled with ice – cold and empty.

He clears his throat and tries for gentleness, as his mother had spoken to him after a nightmare – sweeping him up into her feeble arms and brushing his hair back from his forehead. ‘Ren,’ it comes out hard and cold instead.

The figure visibly jumps, and Hux wonders at that – surely Ren would have heard him at least if he hadn’t sensed him through whatever mysterious Force powers Ren has. It had always seemed like that before, Hux hadn’t even been able to sneak up on Ren – every time he’d so much as stepped onto the bridge of the Finalizer or into Ren’s quarters, a gloved hand would fall onto his shoulder and a deep voice would rumble into his ear through Ren’s vocoder, ‘General Hux.’ Even the ghost of it, captured in his memories, makes Hux shiver.

‘Hux?’ Ren replies after a moment, voice terse but with a note of uncertainty that Hux just catches above the rain, the slightest tremor in Ren’s voice.

‘Come. Inside,’ Hux says, sounding strained even to himself, ‘Ren.’

He doesn’t wait to see if Ren will follow, turning back towards the hut and pushing in through the door and striding back towards the bed. It wasn’t exactly an order, but he still expects Ren to follow it. And sure enough, after a few moments, Hux hears the slightest squeak of the door hinges, the feather-light brush of cool air against his back even under the blanket. Then, apart from the rain, silence settles again.

He tenses, refusing to acknowledge the way his treacherous heart hammers in his chest. Will Ren settle on the floor in the corner, long limbs curled protectively around himself, Hux wonders. Or perhaps on one of Hux’s chairs around the kitchen table, stretching out his legs awkwardly and squirming as he tries to find a little comfort. Or, and even the thought makes Hux’s cheeks heat even in the cool of the night, will he crawl after Hux into the warmth of Hux’s own bed.

But there is only silence – not footsteps crossing the room, no scrape of the chair against the floor or even any creaking floorboards, and so Hux is left guessing.

It would be oh-so-easy for him to roll over, to pull back the blankets and offer Ren a place at his side again, to feel Ren’s chest pressed against his back, to twine their fingers together. Instead, he bites down so hard on his lip that he thinks it might bleed and refuses to move, pressing his hands between his thighs to stop them from moving and ignoring his aching heart. It’s just pride, he tells himself, that Ren is far beneath him – Rebel scum at its finest!

Even that is a lie, though. While he aches for Ren’s touch, for whatever strange and ugly thing had grown between them over the years, Ren’s next and inevitable betrayal is an ache he can’t risk.

Time passes slowly in the night, warping out so that minutes feel like hours in the cold and darkness with only the sound of rain on the roof. Hux doesn’t know how long he lays there, waiting and listening, eyes closing further with every blink. Somewhere before morning, he falls asleep.

***

Hux watches the planet through the viewport, the silence around him heavy but not oppressive. The Finalizer is so close that he can even see the dust clouds in the planet’s atmosphere, kicked up by the battle. He feels like if he looks carefully enough he will be able to see the First Order’s Forces, arranged into neat military lines against the chaos of the destruction of the Resistance.

‘I’ve been here before,’ he thinks, a floaty kind of emptiness filling up his chest where his heart should be pounding. The scene has a well-worn feeling to it, a rose-tinted familiarity, that he expects – the Finalizer is his ship, after all, he has commanded her for years by now, and Hux should be familiar with her. There’s something else though, something he can’t quite grasp, his mind slow and clouded; something more than this.

‘Sir,’ Phasma’s voice cuts through the silence and Hux turns to face her, his heart catching at the sight of his old friend, ‘there’s a communication on the subspace channel for you. It’s Kylo Ren, on the surface, he’s demanding to speak to you.’

‘I’ll take it at my console,’ he says, inclining his head a few inches. Of course, Ren would interrupt him even now, in his moment of glory, Hux thinks as he keys in his access codes, accepting the communication with a flick of his wrist.

‘Hux,’ the voice crackles from the screen, even without the vocoder. A bad line?

‘Ren, what is it you want?’ He tries to keep his voice under control, but can’t help the little note of petulance that he hears slipping into his tone, ‘I’m a little busy…,’

‘Hux, listen to me,’ Kylo cuts across him, sounding breathless, ‘you have to-’

***

Hux rises with the sun, only allowing himself a small groan as he flops out of bed and his feet hit the cool stone floor.  He makes sure to move quickly, despite the daze of sleep that still weighs heavily on his mind, across the room and into the bathroom; hyper-aware of the soft and rumpled state of the tunic he wears as pyjamas and Ren’s sleeping figure, curled in on himself in the corner of the room. It’s embarrassing, to say the least, he ponders as he showers and shaves; not only to be brought so low but for Ren to see him like this, weak and defeated.

He pictures himself in a uniform as dark as the night sky, form-fitting and sleek – made from the finest fabrics in the Galaxy, so that even such a plain uniform is extravagant, and feels the weight on his chest disappear.

The bowl of oatmeal is warm against his palm, the fragrance filling the hut, as he takes his usual measured bites. Hux can’t help it, as much as he tries to resist, his eyes are drawn to the figure in the corner like Ren has his own gravity.

Hux is almost done with his oatmeal, scraping the bottom of the bowl with his spoon when Ren wakes – his eyes snap open, wide and wild, as his body springs upright, and his back hits the wall behind him.

‘Good Morning,’ Hux finds himself saying, forcing the spoon past his parted lips to cover his wince at the awkward atmosphere.

Ren stares at him for a few painful seconds, something unreadable in his expression – in the crease between his eyebrows and the sudden clarity in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he replies finally, stumbling to his feet, ‘morning.’ He lumbers over to the Food Synthesizer in three long strides.

Hux tries his best to look away, to look at anywhere, anything but Ren. He takes a large mouthful of his Caf, letting the bitter taste settle on his tongue as Ren’s matching bowl of Oatmeal slides across the table. The silence that had settled over the room is interrupted by the scrape of the chair over the floor, as Ren pulls it out and sits with a huff. Hux allows himself to peer out of the very corner of his eye for a few moments, watching as Ren digs into his Oatmeal as if he hasn’t eaten in days.

‘So Ren,’ he hears say feeling the bile rising in his throat, his skin itchy and tight, ‘isn’t this homely? Domestic?’

‘Don’t call me that,’ Ren snaps at him, shooting a glare in Hux’s direction before his expression softens and he looks away in embarrassment, cheeks flushing a deep red – as if he has remembered his manners.  _ A first time for everything _ , Hux thinks.

‘Don’t call you your name?’ He’s being petty, Hux knows he is and yet he can’t help but needle Ren, push and push until Ren cracks. It’s what he’s always done, after all. And there’s that feeling in his chest, that’s been dormant since Ren had left, that he refuses to acknowledge.

‘Ben,’ Ren says, dropping his head as if there is a weight pressing down on his shoulders. ‘I’m Ben Solo now, I have to be. The burden is mine to bear, of what I’ve done. Of who I’ve betrayed and killed…,’ his voice trails off and his gaze meets Hux’s own.

‘Ah,’ Hux thinks suppressing a smirk in equal measures as a groan of frustration, ‘he’s still as dreadfully self-pitying.’

‘The past follows me, it won’t die, and it won’t let me go. It’s going to make me pay for what I’ve done. I’m letting it,’ Ren continues. Hux is unable to look away, despite Ren’s overdramatic suffering, Hux finds himself transfixed by the spots of colour rising high on Ren’s cheekbones and the way he worries his chapped bottom lip between his teeth.

He takes a look at Ren for the first time since Ren had arrived, a real look, taking in every detail. Ren’s hair is definitely longer, Hux can tell despite it being tied up, but instead of neatly styled – curling around his face in carefully arranged curls, it is pulled back severely like an afterthought. His skin remains pale, stark in contrast to Hux’s growing farmers tan, and his lips look dry and sore – as if Ren has been worrying them.   

Ren is in pain. Hux realises, in some distant sense with his gaze still fixed on Ren’s face, that he’d always thought Ren would be happy – that he’d be smug over Hux’s defeat or that there had at least been a reason for Ren to betray him in the first place, that Ren would be living a better life as a hero with the winning side. Instead, Ren is just as hurt as Hux is.

‘Rey showed me the truth,’ Ren’s voice is soft, almost apologetic and Hux can’t bear it – wants to block his ears with his hands, wants to lean over the table grab Ren by the shoulders. Ren has always been weak for that girl,  _ compassionate _ even. The word stings like dipping a blaster wound into bacta. It makes sense that he would turn to her, believe her when she twisted him around her finger with kindness and promises of the goodness in him. 

_ As if you’re any better _ , a little voice in the back of his mind whispers. Hux chooses to ignore it along with the feeling needling at his heart.

‘She can show you too,’ Ren says, his voice breaking through Hux’s thoughts and draws Hux’s attention back to Ren’s face.

‘You can be better than this.’ The words are like a sabre, twisting in Hux’s gut. Hux feels himself shut off, feels the playful irritation and anger disappear and replaced by something dark and cold.

‘So tell me, _ Ren _ ,’ he makes sure his tongue rolls over the word, watching the muscles in Ren’s jaw clench, ‘if you’re so desperate for me to reform, what am I going to get out of it?

‘That’s not the point!’ Ren is up on his feet and leaning across the table before Hux can even react, his face set in a snarl; a wild animal ready to attack. ‘You’re not even going to try to understand? I knew this was pointless!’

Before Hux can react Ren has pushed away from the table, his chair toppling over backwards and is shouldering out of the door without even a backwards glance at Hux. The door slams closed, bringing a sense of finality with it. Hux gets up from his chair, collecting the dishes with measured movements his mind buzzing but without thoughts. He scrubs at them mechanically, simultaneously wondering where Ren had gone, thinking about nothing and feeling like a cleaning droid. Then, suddenly, through the white noise inside of his skull, it comes to him.

‘How had Ren known the access codes for the Synthesizer?’ Hux thinks, the bowl of oatmeal slipping from between his fingers and landing with a crash in the sink.

_ How had Ren known and moved so easily as if he hadn’t had a second thought about it?  _ __

He stumbles back to the table and collapses into a chair. He runs his hand through his hair mussing the strands, a nervous gesture he still hasn’t managed to stop. This all means there must be something deeper to Ren’s appearance here – although Hux had suspected that there must be. After all, it would be strange, more than strange, out of all the planets in the Galaxy, in the Universe for Ren to crash land on the same one as him. No matter how much Ren spouts the same stories of destiny or the Force.

Ren is dangerous, Hux should’ve known better. Instead, he’d let him into his home like it was nothing, while his map – all of his escape plans, his star chart is barely hidden in the hole in the wall.

How can he make his trips into the mountain, to the field generator when Ren is around? Ren is the enemy no matter what he had used to be – not quite an ally, not quite a friend but something that had tied them together. Hux's heart aches, but he tells himself the feeling is only his despair.

He paces the length of the hut restlessly, feet scuffing against the stone floor, touching each wall with his palm, grounding himself with the feel of the cold rock.  _ One, two, three, four, five, six…  _ He can’t afford to panic.

The thought dawns on him, like a fire sparking up in his mind. Ren is the North Star, his point of reference.

Yes, Ren is dangerous but he also has information that Hux desperately needs. Even if he hadn’t been at Hux’s trial or sentencing along with Organa, Rey, Poe and the rest of the Resistance ‘leadership’ (he scoffs at the word, in even his thoughts, as if the disorganised Resistance could be said to have leadership), Ren must be a trusted member of the Resistance – he is Organa’s son after all and surely Rey would have put in a good word for him. Even if Hux is wrong Ren would at least know the location, the system even, of the planet to have been able to crash land on it. And, Hux thinks wincing despite himself, a weakness that only Hux can exploit. Or at least Ren had used to.

‘It’s as much as he deserves,’ Hux reminds himself yet again, feeling like a broken Jukebox – repeating the same tune over and over. ‘He betrayed you first.’ Still, the feeling of using Ren doesn’t fill even Hux’s black heart with joy, but Hux knows he’ll do what he has to.

The thoughts stick with him, as he waters and tends to his garden like an over-worked bee droid, buzzing to himself. He hardly notices the time passing, ignores the hollowness in his stomach and midday marches past and the night begins to draw in – shadows lengthening, the sun slipping lower and lower in the sky. Ren doesn’t return so Hux doesn’t stop.

Eventually though, while his fingers continue to twitch - searching for something to do, Hux finds that he’s run out of tasks – even those he’s been putting off for days. The crops are watered and tended to, today's harvest is carefully organised into containers for preserving or eating that evening, a new bed planet with fresh soil and seeds from their little-sealed packets. He feels accomplished at least, leaning heavily on the handle of his spade – admiring how he's exerted his will over the environment, how he has secured order over chaos once again, even the weeds (thin, lanky things) laying in a neat pile at his feet. If only military strategy was this simple, he thinks as he allows himself a small smile.

‘Hux,’ the voice makes him jump, his cheeks heating at being so taken by surprise. Ren is standing a few steps away – his skin is visibly red and covered by a slick sheen of sweat from the heat, his hair falling around his face in frazzled chunks and his shoulders obviously rigid beneath his tunic. He looks tense and that is enough to send Hux’s heart jumping into his throat, his hands tightening around the spade until his eyes snap finally to Ren’s face. Despite the way Ren is carrying himself as if he is ready to jump at the smallest noise, his lips are tilted upwards at the edges into a small, relaxed smile. Hux loosens his grip on the spade.

Physical exertion had always helped before, on the Finalizer, with Ren’s temper – the anger that followed him around like a shadow. Although usually this hadn’t involved visiting the onboard training room and Hux had soon learned to sign off on console repairs and replacements without comment. Even damages were better than Ren being upset, or at least more upset than usual.  

Ren inclines his head at Hux, stepping slowly towards him with purpose – as if he has something to say. Hux, however, feels his cheeks grow even hotter if that is possible. He is not some flighty creature, to be moved around with care.

He scoops up his boxes of produce with quick movements and heads towards the hut without sparing Ren a backwards glance. Once he would’ve at least entertained Ren’s actions, would’ve invited Ren to do something that would annoy him just so they could argue so spectacularly afterwards. It feels good to ignore him.

He stows the produce that he’s going to preserve – to turn into Jams or store away in the cool darkness of the cupboards at the back of the hut, before setting about preparing some dinner. He portions up the vegetables and gets some meat from the Synthesizer, pointedly ignoring the way he gathers enough for two without Ren even asking. The hut is silent apart from the even chops of the knife through vegetables and the crash of cooking pots against each other, Ren sitting quietly at the table. When Hux risks a glance in his direction, Ren is staring out of the window towards the setting sun.

He forces himself to look away, setting a pot with water over the stove – ready to boil water for the noodles. Hux himself has never been one for flavour. He’s enjoyed exotic dishes in the past, of course, but it was the occasion that he had truly enjoyed – the lavish dinner parties and brushing elbows with the leaders of the Galaxy. Being important was the real draw, not the food. Still, he finds himself trying, just a little, giving in to the nervous feeling in his heart – the stupid insecurity that Ren will find him inadequate.

He sets the cut vegetables and little slices of meat from the Synthesizer to cook and begins to collect up the leftovers that he will keep for tomorrow. ‘Alderaan stew,’ he thinks, a smirk playing around his lips as he mentally divides the portions. ‘Yes, there will be just enough.’ Now that would be amusing to feed Ren his own family’s history, to feed him their defeat on a silver spoon.

At first, they eat in silence, Hux watching Ren cautiously out of the corner of his eye as Ren seems to attempt to jam a piece of everything onto his fork and then transfer the oversized pile into his mouth. It’s sort of disgusting but he is very obviously enjoying every mouthful – if the satisfied set of his mouth is anything to go by, and Hux finds this eases something in his chest in equal measures to heating it back up. Not arguing with Ren is so much easier, this silence is easier, it keeps Ren at a distance and stops Hux himself for examining things – feelings, which he wants to keep buried. Arguing is fun though, especially with Ren who hits all of the right spots. It annoys him how much Ren puts him on edge, how he tilts Hux’s world on its axis; which, in turn, puts him even more on edge.

‘So Hux,’ Ren says and Hux’s heart sinks. He’d found Ren almost tolerable when he wasn’t speaking. ‘About earlier, I wanted to apologise,’ Hux feels his eyebrows shooting up into somewhere along his hairline, the fork almost slipping from between his fingers. Kylo Ren apologising for something?

Hux can’t quite find it in himself to answer Ren, his voice failing him. Instead, he manages to incline his head, just slightly. It’s just so strange, Hux finds that he almost can’t accept that it’s actually happening. Maybe Ren truly has changed, maybe Hux had never known him at all.  _ Ben Solo, who is he? _

‘I shouldn’t have pushed it on you so hard. It will take time for you to see the correct path and I understand that now,’ Ren says, nodding to himself – at the truth he sees in his own words.

_ Or not, then. _

Hux’s not sure why he does it. He’s more than annoyed with Ren, his anger is simmering hotly beneath his skin and isn’t that the way things always start between them. When they kiss, Hux wants to say that it’s like a supernova, like stars exploding behind his eyes but nothing with Ren is ever like in the holonovels.

Ren’s mouth is warm and slick against his own, his lips moving maddeningly slow – languid as if he has all the time in the world to sit here and kiss Hux. He draws Hux in with his lips and his hands, slipping them up under Hux’s tunic and leaving Hux gasping. Their dinner, his own annoyance at Ren’s stupidity are both gone replaced by this feeling, this moment in time and nothing beyond it.

He swings his legs over the chair and his body into Ren’s lap with one quick movement, tilting Ren’s head back with his hand cradled along the hinge of Ren’s jaw. He feels Ren’s breath huffing softly against his lips as they break apart.

Hux slips his hand through Ren’s hair, drawn in by the shine and softness, and tangles his fingers between the strands. For a moment he lets them sit there, nails scratching softly against Ren’s scalp. He stares down at Ren, Ren’s eyes wide and his lips parted in a way that Hux knows must mirror his own face. Slowly, he reels Ren in with the grip on his hair until their lips meet again, hot and desperate.

With a single-mindedness he didn’t know he could have, Hux works his fingers through the strands of Ren’s hair, mussing it and pulling it in waves out from his bun. It annoys him, has annoyed him from the start at the crash site, the bun. Ren’s hair shouldn’t be tamed, he decides as he gets the last strands free, it should be worn in wild curls that frame his face, like the mane of a beast. Before Hux can admire his handiwork, Ren’s fingers – always so clever, have untied the neat knot of his tunic that rests just above the jut of his hip.

‘It’s like I’m unwrapping you,’ Ren says quietly, his voice deep and rich. It sends a shiver through him. 

‘Ren,’ he huffs into the shell of Ren’s ear, trying to catch Ren’s hands desperately in his. To stop him. He doesn’t want this to end – the pleasure he has denied, the feelings that are spilling over like a dam has been broken inside of him, but he knows that he must. He can’t let Ren see. But he’s already too late. His tunic top falls off, pooling around his waist as the sleeves catch on his elbows and Hux feels Ren freeze beneath him.

‘Where did you…,’ Kylo’s eyebrows pull together sharply and he seems unable to meet Hux’s gaze, moving his hand in a motion that spans the width of Hux’s torso and the scars – pink and puckered now, that cross his torso like spider webs, matching the one across his lips. Hux sighs. He’d hoped to avoid this, or at least keep it from Ren until later.

‘The Resistance,’ he sniffs, before taking a deep breath. He supposes he should tell the entire thing. After all, his precious pride and dignity have been in ruins for months now, and he’s got nothing to lose anymore. ‘General Organa didn’t allow it, of course. It’s inhumane to torture prisoners, even important ones. Cruel,’ he smirks, wide and with too many teeth.  _ And exactly what I would do, _ is left unsaid. ‘But my guards didn’t care. A few bruises, broken bones they could be explained away easily enough. I deserved it, they said and I agreed – it was the least they could do.’ In an odd way, it had made him feel important, to be worth so much fury and hatred. Pain had always been a great motivator.

‘Except that one day they stopped completely, were scared to even touch me. Were polite even. It was the strangest thing,’ he takes a breath. The memories are painful, to even admit that these things had happened – to admit his capture, his failure, is almost too much for him. But he can’t help but puzzle over it still, the change in his captors that seemed to have come from nowhere. His mind tugs at the thread.

‘Hm,’ Kylo huffs softly. His hands still span Hux’s waist, large and warm, his thumb moving seemingly unconsciously back and forth over Hux’s skin.

Slowly, piece by piece Hux comes back to himself, breaking away from Ren with a shove to Ren’s chest, dread like ice in his veins. Not for anything, Ren has done but for himself, for letting his feelings take over. For not regretting kissing Ren, for wanting more when connections are dangerous.

‘What am I doing?’ He chokes out, not realising that he’s saying it aloud. Ren stares back at him with wide, soulful eyes and Hux feels like he can barely breathe. Kriff.

He resolves at that moment, to ignore Ren from now on. He has no choice. Ren is making him weak, making him forget himself. His heart thunders, blood rushing in his ears as he considers it. A tactic of the Resistance perhaps, for him to finally lose himself; for the General to become Armitage, to lose all hope.

He hadn’t thought they could be so cruel. He’s almost impressed.

They wash the dishes in silence; Hux can feel that his jaw is clenched tight with tension as he hands each clean dish over to Ren. He hadn’t asked for Ren’s help – after they’d separated Hux hadn’t said another word to him. But Ren had moved as if it was completely natural, following Hux over to the tiny sink and taking the dishes from him wordlessly.

He hates Ren in this moment – standing next to him at his shitty sink, in his shitty hut in the middle of his failure. The difference between them feels like a physical force – like Hux would be electrocuted if he even tried to touch Ren.

‘Ren must be loving this,’ Hux thinks as he drains the water from the sink and heads over to the bed. He carefully pulls off his shoes at the edge of the bed in the last few dregs of sunlight, before climbing underneath the covers and rolling to face the wall. He lets his eyes slipped closed and holds his body perfectly still, waiting for sleep.

The hut is silent around him, so silent that despite everything that has happened – the rock that the ocean’s tide has warped around, Hux manages to forget that Ren is even there. Then the smallest sound catches in his tired mind, the slightest hitch of breath and Hux is reminded again of Ren’s presence. That Ren is laying on the hard and cold stone floor just meters away while Hux lays on his comfortable, if a little lumpy, bed.

‘Ren,’ Hux says, his voice is strained and quiet from disuse. He’s not sure why, after all, he’d just made up to ignore Ren. And yet in the darkness, it makes sense. Tomorrow he will act, for tonight Ren deserves a little mercy. Or at least, that it will gain Ren’s trust and the information he has (that’s what Hux tells himself anyway).

The bed dips as Ren slips beneath the covers, his body radiating warmth. Hux forces himself to remain still, facing away from Ren, even though he aches to roll over and gather Ren into his arms. Eventually, he sleeps.  

Hux watches the planet through the viewport, so close that he can even see the dust clouds in the planet’s atmosphere, kicked up by the battle. Phasma stands to his right, working at her console while the rest of the bridge crew stand in silent awe at the scene below. He knows without even looking; he’s been here before countless times, he hadn’t known then but now his mind is clear, it seems so obvious.

‘If only,’ Hux thinks, a lump in his throat, tearing his eyes away from the scene. ‘This is the way it should have been.’

The sadness passes and he steels himself, moving towards his console with measured steps. He knows what comes next, he’s not sure why he must act on it – why he feels a thread of panic in his chest at the thought of messing up the rhythm. It’s only a dream, after all, something conjured up But Hux is pretty sure he’s never had a dream like this before – that seems so real and solid, that has repeated over every time he closes his eyes. There is something here, he’s sure of it. He refuses to give up.

‘Sir,’ Phasma’s voice cuts through the silence and Hux turns to face her not because he knows he must – it’s what he’d done before after all, but to catch a glimpse of his friend again. His only true friend, the only one he truly misses. Kriff, he misses her, wants to stand beside her one last time. ‘There’s a communication on the subspace channel for you. It’s Kylo Ren, on the surface, he’s demanding to speak to you.’

‘I’ll take it at my console,’ he says, managing to tear his eyes away from Phasma. This is the important part, although Hux isn’t quite sure how he knows that. He has to listen to Ren, to find out what he needs to tell him, Hux realises.

‘Hux,’ the voice crackles from the screen, even without the vocoder.

‘Yes, Ren?’ Hux replies, breathless. Finally, he can find out what it is that Ren has been trying to tell him. Finally. He waits with bated breath. 

‘Hux, listen to me,’ Kylo sounds equally breathless, his words laced with grunts and gasps of pain. ‘Please help me, I’m trapped. Please, Hux! Help me!’

Hux wakes up.

He gasps for a few seconds, rolling over onto his side as he tries to catch his bearings. He’d been on the Finalizer, he’s sure that… The morning light streams through the windows – the Resistance in all of their mercy hadn’t provided him with curtains or even shutters, and across his face.

His hands are shaking, he realises with clinical detachment, holding them out away from himself as if they are wild animals. The dream. Ren’s cries for help. Just remembering it sends a shiver through his whole body beneath the blanket. He’s never heard Ren so scared, so pitiful and broken that he would ever beg for help.

‘Hux,’ Ren’s voice cuts through the silence – low and gravelly, weighed down with sleep, and Hux freezes, comforter twisted in his hands. Ren’s hand slips over the crook of his arm, weathered and warm fingers resting lightly against his skin.

Hux manages one breath, a quick and shallow inhale, followed by another and another. His hands stop shaking, the comforter finally slipping free from between his fingertips. Ren is here, Ren is okay he repeats over to himself like a mantra as his gaze settles on Ren’s hand. Ren’s warmth seeps into his skin, warming the feeling that has been building in him since he’d seen Ren climbing from the wreckage. The feeling that he has tried to push away and ignore, that he’d thought had been lost at the moment he’d lost Ren – buried and forgotten.

‘Ren,’ he croaks, voice heavy with sleep and disuse. Later he can blame it on the way he’s still half asleep, making memories and the present blend together, Hux reasons as he slides his other hand over Ren’s and slips his slim fingers through Ren’s broad ones; like no time has passed since they last did this. Like everything hasn’t happened.

He lets the heat in his belly guide him, everything seeming lazy and slow in the yellow morning light. He rolls over in one swift movement so that he straddles Ren, his thighs pressed in tight against Ren’s hips and the comforter pooling around where their bodies touch. It makes his head spin but it’s worth it for the keening

‘So worked up, already,’ he tuts, slipping easily into the routine they had practised over so many cycles onboard the Finalizer.  Except, he finds, not quite. Instead of biting stinging, heated kisses into the skin of Ren’s neck and across the broad expanse of his ridiculously large chest, Hux feels as lazy and slow as the morning suns, as they both track lazily across the sky.

He takes his time, tracing up the line of Ren’s throat and feeling the pulse thrum beneath his fingers until his fingers reach the coarse beginnings of stubble along Ren’s strong jaw. All the time he’s aware of Ren’s eyes watching him, as he reclines back against their shared pillow on the lumpy mattress; staying silent for once.

He traces up Ren’s jawline, until he reaches the shell of his ear and then fans out from there, his fingertips mapping out the contours and planes of Ren’s face – the slight crook of his nose, the elegant planes of his cheeks, the ridges of his cheekbones and the valleys of his eyes. Ren is like Hux’s very own star chart, as Hux’s slender fingers trace the distance between his strong features and nebula’s of freckles. They are like the constellations in the sky, Hux has studied them in detail – he knows their names and their shapes, but he’s never taken the time to study them up close, to wonder what the surface of each individual star looks like or the planet’s that surround them.

Before everything had been quick and rough, and while Hux still craves that, he feels like he has all the time in the world at that moment. He leans forward to capture Ren’s lips and Ren must have the same feeling because he moves softly against Hux, huffing little warm breaths against his lips. The morning light streams across them, warming the final chills of the night from Hux’s skin, leaving him lazy and satisfied.

They kiss sweetly and softly, Hux’s heartbeat a slow thump in his chest, for a few more moments as Ren’s huffs get needier and threadier, turning into little moans. Hux feels himself getting hard in his sleep tunic in response, the need that had been simmering quietly away in his gut is stoked by Ren’s neediness.  

Ren pushes him away, with a soft little prod to the flat plane of Hux’s chest, and for a moment Hux is overcome by the slightest little nagging doubt. Failure, not being good enough – the thoughts prickle at the edges of his mind, ever present. But, as if he knows where Hux’s mind is spiralling, Ren slips his hands up his own body to close over Hux’s, still tangled in Ren’s hair. Then, with a gentleness Hux didn’t know Ren could possess, he brings Hux’s hands down past the great expanse of his torso and dips them beneath his waistband.

‘Please?’ Ren says, eyes dark and teeth worrying the meat of his lip. Hux’s heart that had been languishing in this strange softness flutters for a moment, his pulse jumping in his throat at the sight laid out before him. At Kylo Ren asking Hux permission. Truly this must be the rarest of treasures, Hux thinks.

Now it is his turn to be gentle. He moves slowly, Ren’s hands slipping away from Hux’s as he finds Ren’s cock – large like the rest of him and practically throbbing with need. There’s just one drop of pre-come at the head and Hux swirls it gently with his thumb, not bothering to suppress his self-satisfied smirk.

‘I did that,’ Hux thinks, more than a little proudly, ‘he’s thinking of me.’

He strokes slowly, in a nice even rhyme from base to tip that he knows Ren likes the most – that sends him into a frenzy, panting and moaning breaking the silence of the hut, of the planet. The only sound for miles is Ren and his own pleasure. Hux licks his lips at just the thought. Sure enough, Ren’s eyes slip closed as his mouth hangs open, huffing softly – quite the picture.

He’s so focused on his ministrations that he almost doesn’t notice Ren’s hands on him, peeling down the soft fabric of his tunic to his thighs, until Ren’s hand closes around his cock. It’s always a thrill to see Ren’s hand around him, so rough and large and warm, like Ren was built just for this. Hux moans at Ren’s touch, ducking his head forward to lick across Ren’s mouth before capturing his lips once again. They are messier this time, moving uncoordinatedly against each other’s lips as they each reach their limits but still their kiss is warm and gentle, and Hux’s heart overflowing with some emotion he doesn’t want to name.

It’s like they’re doing this for the first time. And perhaps they are, Hux thinks because it had never been like this before. They’ve fucked countless times – in every position, if not every place for Hux’s fear of being found out was always too strong. They’d even brought each other off with only their hands to relieve the stresses of command or battle – exactly the same as they are now, but always rough and quick, never wallowing in the others passion like this.

He can feel the sweat creeping along the edge of his hairline and the feeling low down in his abdomen that tells him he’s close, and so Hux forces his eyes up from where his hand is moving around Ren to Ren’s face. Their eyes meet, Ren’s wide and glassy with a need that Hux is sure he must mirror, and his cheeks flushed pink and his hair mussed like a halo on the pillow. Hux feels himself tipping over the edge at just the sight of Ren, at how needy and wanton he looks, at how needy and wanton Hux himself feels under Ren’s hand.

White prickles at the edge of his vision and he feels himself coming over Ren’s hand, biting back a guttural moan. And that must be enough to send Ren over the edge too, as Hux feels the press of Ren’s face against his neck and the spasm that rocks through Ren’s body before Hux’s knees give out and he sprawls face first over Ren.

He lays there, shamelessly on top of Ren with his pants pulled down around his knees, for what feels like hours – eyes screwed tightly shut, as he rides out the afterglow. Ren is warm and solid beneath him, his breath even and comforting, but still as the prickles of pleasure lessen in his mind, worry begins to nag at Hux again.

He knows he shouldn’t have acted that way, even as the pleasurable feeling in his limbs tells him the exact opposite. He knows that things have never been that way between them – there has never been any softness, that’s not the way things are between them. Or so Hux had thought. He’d thought he’d known his own feelings on sex – rough and quick, and on Ren – a good fuck, a general annoyance, but he’s beginning to fit the pieces together. To see the real picture he’s tried to hide from himself.

‘What will Ren think?’ He thinks, the horror really setting in. ‘What if I’ve ruined everything? What if he leaves and never gives me the information I leave?’ He wonders even as his heart aches with a different feeling, a different worry altogether.

‘Hux,’ Ren whispers, breaking the silence, his voice still low from sleep but with a note of softness in it that instantly soothes Hux’s nerves. Something warm and rough brushes against Hux’s hip, making him tense until he realises that it’s just Ren’s hand – resting lightly against his hipbone.

He hears, more than feels, himself take a long exhale as his body relaxes – satisfied by Ren’s response that at least for the moment Hux hasn’t ruined everything, the delicate balance between them, with this strange feeling that drives him to softness. He gives in to his temptation, leaning up to capture Ren’s lips once more – a soft and lazy peck before he forces himself upright.

Hux can already feel the heat in the air, dry and unwelcome, as he pads across the room to the bathroom. The coolness of the stone is even more refreshing to his feet after the mornings… activities. He flinches at how prudish he is even at the memory, staring at his reflection in the mirror for a few long moments, realising that his heart is still pounding away in his chest.

The man who looks back at him is not the General – his hair is frizzy from the heat and mussed from Ren’s hands, the slightest hint of fuzz just visible along his jawline, spots of colour speckling his cheeks and his eyes wide and glassy. There’s something soft about him – warm like the desert has infiltrated his skin. All of his hard lines are softened – his hair, the stark paleness of his skin, and even the decisive sweep of his jaw.

This is what they could have, he realises, this is what the Resistance would give him. Ren, meek and polite, his hair falling in soft waves from a messy bun, and himself – scruffy and soft at the edges, jailed yes but picking away at a novel in is cell, kissing the corner of Ren’s mouth with soft puckered lips, and softer touches and quiet voices fumbling in the darkness. A life of idleness, of softness and love like he’s never felt before.

Hux almost thinks he could stomach it, in those silent moments softened by the gentle light of the sunrise. He turns away, grabbing the bucket from the corner to fetch some cool water. He needs to shower and shave. 

***       

Hux sits on the porch – a few slabs of stone at the front of the hut, shaded by the very edge of the roof, a mug of tea still steaming where he rests it on top of his knee. Night is just setting in as the planets binary suns slip behind the horizon; the shadows lengthening and the landscape bathed in a soft light. It’s silent and peaceful in a way Hux had never known he’d wanted –preferring the buzz of subordinates around him and the background hum of a Ship’s engine, but now he lets his eyes slip closed and enjoys the nothingness. His mind runs in circles for a few moments – thoughts of his escape, of the stars, of his remaining contacts scattered between them. Of the future, his glorious return.

He’d managed to slip away to the mountains that morning after breakfast when Ren had gone off to continue to repairs on his shuttle. It was a nice little routine they’d fallen into, allowing Hux to escape to the field generator. Normally he wouldn’t go at this time of day, so close to midday and the heat that brought with it, but his anticipation pushes him forward.

‘The information,’ he’d said, so quickly into the makeshift receiver that the words had hardly had time to form on his tongue. ‘I’ll have it soon. Ready a ship and have a star chart on hand.’ It didn’t feel real, he had hardly believed he had been saying these words; that his freedom was so close.

‘Excellent,’ his associate's voice had hissed through the device, thick and low with smoke despite the low quality, ‘get it to me as quickly as you can, then we can move. I’ve prepared a suite for you here and collected as many arms and credits as I can.’ The sound of music had been obvious, despite the distortions, the instruments and warbling of a singer were obvious.

Of course, Hux had thought, they would be at a bar. Lynx was far from Hux’s preferred contact, even if they had always brought him the most detailed information – leaving even Hux wondering how they had been able to extract such information and bring it to him alive.

He’d paid them handsomely over the years, most of it Hux assumed Lynx had sunk immediately into drinks and weapons. Despite how much he’d valued them, he’d also never exactly expected to have to rely on them. But Hux didn’t have many options now. Or any at all – the Resistance being annoying thorough with digging up First Order weeds.

Ren’s feet are loud against the stone, splitting Hux’s peace neatly in half and bringing him hurtling back to the present. Hux grunts and forces his eyes open, watching as Ren throws himself down beside him, his shoulder brushing against Hux’s with enough force to push Hux’s entire body to the side.

‘What are you doing out here?’ Ren says, leaning back on his palms as Hux regains his balance.

Hux raises his tea to his mouth in an over-the-top gesture, taking a long sip. ‘Stargazing,’ he says, swallowing his mouthful and pointing in the general direction of the sky with his elbow. He doesn’t quite want to admit that he was just sitting idly yet, despite the number of things that are already in the open between them – the weakness Hux has already shown. It is, the predatory part of him whispers, a perfect opportunity to get information from Ren as well.  

Ren looks up at him as if the thought had never even occurred to him. As of even though the Force supposedly connects him to all things – life, death, rebirth as Hux had heard Snoke rattling on about, Ren had never thought to look up above into the night sky. His eyes are wide and dark, reflecting the light from the binary suns as if Hux has revealed yet another mystery of the Galaxy.

‘I’ve never,’ Ren says, slowly as if he’s testing each word out. ‘I don’t know. Can you show me how?’ He lifts one of his large hands, and motions vaguely in front of himself, with a quick almost anxious flick of his wrist.

Hux sets his tea down beside himself, trying his best to exude calm even as his pulse jumps in his throat. Now is his chance and he knows it; Ren is literally handing it to him, the coordinates feel like they’re already in his grasp. His heart pounds in his chest, already too attached to the idea that his escape is near – imagining the first breath he will take on-board his contacts ship as he leaves the atmosphere.

‘It’s not difficult to do,’ he starts in his best impersonation of his favourite instructor from the Academy; Hux keeps his cadence slow and deliberate. ‘The most difficult is learning all of the names, their too long and too grand for such undeserving rocks.’

‘But you were born on,’ Ren pauses for a moment, scrunching up his nose as he thinks. Rather than offering anything Hux enjoys the beat of silence, waiting for Ren to continue. ‘Arkanis. How do you know these stars, these constellations?’

‘Still, I was taught a lot about the Outer Rim,’ Hux says, trying to keep his voice smooth and unbothered, even as he tests Ren’s reaction to this little piece of information. Seeing if his guess is correct.

‘Mmm,’ Ren hums, more of an acceptance than a denial, still staring up at the sky above. Hux feels his heart pound. That information, at least, he’d been pretty sure about but still, it gives him a thrill of courage and self-satisfaction for it to be confirmed to him.

He pulls out the star chart from beside him, barely restraining himself from crushing it between his fingers. He has most of the constellations in the sky mapped and numbered, corresponding with his guesses at their names in the journal weighing down his back pocket – it never pays to have all your information in one place, after all, Hux knows.

‘It’s difficult to do without a droid, but I managed it pretty well,’ Hux says, barely suppressing a smug smile from crossing his face. Despite the delicacy of his task, Hux is proud of what he’s achieved, the hours of study and the loneliness more than worthwhile for the accomplishment fluttering lazily in his chest. ‘It took me a long time at first, making sketches of everything I could see every night. I’ll have to keep adding to them as the seasons change. If this kirffing rock even has seasons,’ he snorts, still aiming for a casual, conversational tone even as his heart races. He hasn’t felt so alive

‘I should have destroyed this planet too. Kriff the whole system, even. Starkiller would’ve sliced right through these useless rocks,’ he can’t help himself now that he’s started, the words spilling out before he can stop them, grasping at the memory of his greatness. Beside him, Ren remains silent, and Hux begins to worry that he’s ruined his chance.

‘Vader,’ Ren’s voice is quiet and his eyes downcast, staring intently at Hux’s map. There’s an energy around him, like a physical force – a breeze running across Hux’s face without any air, that even Hux finds he cannot deny – the Force is terrifyingly real between them. ‘He came near here, once. Long ago, but I can still feel it,’ he says, flexing his fingers, ‘Cophrigin V, he killed someone there.’ Even though Ren is looking away, Hux can see that he looks shaken.

‘Or not quite. Almost killed them,’ Ren says cryptically, as he turns his gaze up to the sky again.

Cophrigin V. The Cophrigin system. Five planets, only one charted and all uninhabited. Hux feel his heart rate pick up at such a speed that his head begins to spin. Of course. Ren had given him exactly what he needed, without even realising it. Hux can hardly believe he’s done it, despite the fact that his pride had never allowed himself to doubt that he would.

‘Let me show you more,’ he says, fighting to keep his voice even as his mind races, trying to hold together the façade. He could be free within hours or at least the next day. It doesn’t seem real.

He traces over the constellations as he speaks, with his own fingers guiding Ren’s in great sweeping arcs. Ren’s hands are so large compared to his own – broad, strong and rough with the nails neatly trimmed. Beneath his tunic, the necklace burns where it touches his skin.

‘How do you know how to do,’ Ren says, with an awkward roll of his broad shoulders as if trying to encompass the words he’s searching for, ‘this?’ He moves his hand in a slow sweeping gesture, fingers reaching up towards the twinkling stars above.

Hux sighs, weighing the words on his tongue before he speaks. He supposes that he owes Ren this much at least, a fair trade of information. ‘I was tutored on Arkanis before I went to the Academy,’ he says slowly, tearing his gaze away from Ren and up towards the star instead. It doesn’t hurt that much then, doesn’t feel quite so intimate. ‘Astronomy was required in the Academy. All Officers must know at least the major star systems in the Galaxy to be able to join the First Order. But I was especially interested, I suppose,’ he tries to keep his voice as steady and uninterested as he can, his fingers picking idly at a loose thread on the sleeve of his tunic.

‘My Father,’ he stutters over the word, hating the taste of it in his mouth. He feels Ren flinch beside him, the slightest brush of Ren’s shoulder against his own. This it seems they can both agree on – the pain of family. ‘He had a telescope, kept up in the top of the house and fixed to the floor. It was ornate and excessive, salvaged from the Emperor’s ship if his stories are true. I used to sneak up there at night, to look out at the stars. You could zoom in so close that I could make out the planets even, could watch the flares spewing out of the stars and the spots dancing across the surface, all the time with a filter protecting your eyes from the glare.’

He takes a breath, finding that now he’s started he can’t quite stop, ‘my Father told me I was useless, that I wouldn’t amount to anything. But I knew that one day I would rule over those star systems – every last one I could see in the sky would bow to me, and even more that I couldn’t see. So I learnt their names, almost all of them.’

Ren is staring at him with wide, horrified eyes. ‘Hux..’

Hux is frozen, can feel the warmth in his fingers where Kylo is grasping them but can’t move them. He can only stare back, feeling his heart pounding frantically in his chest even as the blood in his veins turns to ice. He’d never expected Ren’s reaction to be like this; he feels so soft and vulnerable like Ren can see into his soul. He’s already admitted too much, has already shown Ren just the slightest glimpse of a small pale child – too thin, too weak, too alone. Hux braces for the worst, for Ren’s judgement or worse his laughter.

Except it doesn’t come. The silence hangs heavily between them in the twilight. Hux shivers, finally noticing how cold it is now that the suns have set – like all the overbearing warmth from the day has disappeared with them. He leans a little closer to Ren, who remains silent, before correcting himself and pushing quickly away again, hand scuffing against the stone tiles.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Ren says finally, eyes downcast. ‘I thought you’d… I thought you were thinking about what I said. About changing, about realising what you’ve done wrong. I thought I’d shown you the way as Rey had shown me.’ He pauses for a moment and Hux opens his mouth to speak even though he doesn’t know what he can say before Ren cuts him off anyway, ‘It’s the right path.’  Despite the conviction of his words

Of course. Of course, Ren would still side for the Resistance fools still, after Hux had poured his heart out to him – or at least for Hux. He’d let Ren into his past, his most precious secret and Ren still pushed him away. Hux feels his lip curl back into a snarl, a show of anger to guard against the tremble of hurt starting low in his gut. But instead of the anger or cold shoulder he’d been expecting, Ren reaches forward towards Hux again and tangles his fingers in Hux’s tunic, his hair hanging limply around his face like a curtain.

‘Hux,’ Ren whimpers, soft and pathetic, his oversized hands wrinkling the fabric of Hux’s tunic, ‘tell me what to do. Tell me that I was right. I’m trying to find the way, the path I have to follow but I don’t know if I’ve taken a wrong turn.’

Hux bites back a gasp – he’d thought Ren might have come here for that reason, but his pathetic heart and weak feelings had hoped that it would be something else. Ren is looking for guidance. Ren is seeking validation. That’s what he’d come here to find, Hux realises with a heavy heart. That’s what Ren has always been seeking – from his parents, from Skywalker, from Snoke, from the girl. He wanted to know that his actions were justified – something Hux had learned early on when his hate hadn’t yet become fond.

He prided himself of being a good judge of character and he’d seen how Ren bowed to Snoke’s every word, how he’d eaten up each direction and talk of grandeur or destiny like he was starving for it. Now he aches with it; he’s never been more disappointed to be right.  He blinks once, twice, before letting his eyes slip closed for just a moment.

In the darkness of his own head, he can see the paths ahead of him as clearly as if he is really standing in front of them, at the junction between the two. Instead of a wooded path they are unnatural – all dark panels and artificial lighting, like the corridors of the Finalizer. If he squints, Hux is sure he can just make out where they lead – one path is bathed in soft light and mediocracy while the other is on fire, all-consuming flames and glory.

Hux knows what he must do, even if it goes against everything he knows. Everything he believes. For a moment, just one moment, he believes Ren’s words – that he can be reformed, that he has some good in him. He crushes those thoughts in an instant. There is no kindness, no softness in him anymore, if there ever was anyway.

‘Ren,’ he starts to say, cutting himself off with a gasp at how close Ren’s face is to his own suddenly. Ren is leaning over towards him, his eyes dark and boring into Hux’s. Hux can even smell him, he realises with another jolt, the scent pouring off of his skin that still never fails to send Hux’s heart racing despite himself – heavy and masculine, thick with sweat and something like smoke. Hux leans a little closer himself without meaning too, drawn in by Ren as he always is.

‘I’m not worth saving, or whatever you’ve gotten into your head. Don’t all of you Force users believe in destiny? Mine was laid out for me long ago and I have to follow that path even if it means rotting here alone,’ he bites his lip even as his heart swells, forcing the lies to the surface. The only destiny Hux allows himself to believe in is his own – to rule the Galaxy, he would never sit back and allow himself to rot on some forgotten backwater planet. But, after all, he thinks - he is trying to be kind to Ren. ‘You have a choice Ben,’ he chokes on the word but manages to force it out. He watches as Ren’s eyes go wide with shock. ‘Go back, return to your mother and your family. You made the correct choice, you won. I was wrong. You don’t have to worry anymore.’ The words burn like acid as he says them, his gut churning with sickness but he soldiers on, determined with frightening focus to do the correct thing for once.

When he meets Ren’s gaze again, Ren’s eyes are closed and his broad chest rises and falls swiftly, with great rasping and heaving breaths while Hux feels his own chest frozen, braced for Ren’s reply. But, it seems, Ren’s only reply is to lean in and press his lips to Hux’s, his hand slipping along the hinge of Hux’s jaw, like a ghost of Hux’s own hand that morning. Before Hux can even process the feeling, Ren is ducking his chin and sweeping Hux in close as he presses their lips together hotly. Ren’s mouth is hot and insistent against his, Ren’s teeth scraping dangerously against his lips. 

The warmth of Ren’s palm and lips against his own, warms Hux to the core and finally – like a weight has been lifted he finds himself able to move again, pressing back against Ren’s lips and slipping his own hand up over Ren’s waist, his shoulders, to tangle into his dark hair. But instead of gentling his hand there – petting the already mussed strands, Hux twists them between his fingertips and tugs, gentle at first before increasing the pressure.

Ren’s response is instant – pulling back just far enough so that his keening moans gust across Hux’s lips, which quickly turn to hisses of pleasure as Hux pulls harder and twists the strands more tightly around his fingers. Hux watches the crimson spread in blotches over Ren’s cheekbones and down beneath the collar of his tunic, just visible in the half-light.                                     

He licks his lips at the sight and Ren blushes even more beautifully under Hux’s attention, that is so at odds with the bright white of Ren’s bared teeth – defiant against his own embarrassment and arousal, under Hux’s hands.

‘How precious,’ Hux can’t help but coo, because he knows it will annoy Ren. And partly, a small and quiet part of his mind whispers, because he knows that underneath, despite his defensiveness, Ren enjoys it – Ren craves being complimented, will store away Hux’s words to pull out in the silence of the night, like precious treasures. He feels himself getting hard.

‘Bed. Now,’ Ren growls and Hux finds that he can’t disagree for once, with Ren’s theatrics. Even the lumpy mattress provided so kindly by the Resistance seems better than outside as, while pain is Hux’s forte, he’s sure that fucking on the rough tiles at night would be the kind of pain that would stop his pleasure, instead of increasing it.

Hux pushes himself to his feet as quickly as he can, his knees aching in protest, as he tries to catch up with Ren who is already striding towards the door, quickly disappearing into shadow despite the short distance between them. Hux can’t help the little sting of hurt that needles at his heart – that Ren is storming away from him without a backwards glance, that Ren is leaving him again, despite how much he knows it isn’t true.

He leaps after Ren, hands catching around one thick bicep and digging in his heels – trying to pull him back. Ren is stronger, of course, and manages to keep going – dragging Hux along behind him, until Hux finally has the strength to tug him to a stop in the centre of the hut.

Hux grabs him back and they tumble down onto the bed, together – twisting and turning. One minute Hux is pushed down into the mattress by Ren’s grip on his shoulders, the next he has wriggled free from beneath Ren – kicking his knees free and sliding quickly away down the mattress. Ren yields with a grunt, flopping down flat on his back onto the mattress - chest heaving and teeth still bared like a wild animal.

This is the Ren he knows, Hux thinks with a sigh, leaning over the side of the bed to find the tin of salve he kept between the bed frame and the mattress. He’s been there all along, Hux had felt him just at the edges of Ren’s words, in his dreams. The necklace feels hot where it presses against Hux’s skin, reminding him that he’s still wearing far too many clothes.

His hand closes around the object – smooth and cool, and he pulls it out from below the mattress into the dim light.  The Resistance – Organa, Dameron, Rey, hadn’t provided him with it, of course, but with a few (embarrassingly desperate) attempts at adjusting it, Hux had found that the food synthesizer had been able to produce a substance that is close enough to lube. He’s never had any troubles with his own experiments anyway – coming embarrassingly fast into his own fist the first time he’d tried it, and spending hours scrubbing at his hand in a bucket of tepid water to remove the grease. He’s perfected the formula since then.

‘Strip,’ he commands as he turns back to Ren, the tone of voice, of the General, coming back to him easily. But Ren pushes back against him, tipping his chin up defiantly and reaches out towards Hux instead – as if trying to reach out for Hux’s own clothes instead. Hux jerks away just out of reach and tuts.

‘Strip!’ He repeats, more harshly this time. Ren yields, bowing his head and starting to pull his tunic over his head. Satisfied with Ren’s compliance, for now at least, Hux reaches for the hem of his own clothes quickly – anxious to free his cock from the confines of his pants. He strips his clothes with quick and measured movements, folding them neatly on the floor next to the haphazard pile of Ren’s, before Ren’s hand closes around his bicep again.

‘Hurry. Up.’ Ren growls, pulling Hux down towards him. Hux gasps in anger pulled completely off balance. But still, he can’t argue with Ren’s urgency - his need and want simmering hotly beneath his skin. He pushes back, a petulant little smack across the meat of Ren’s shoulder blade. He leaves his hand there – just feeling the warmth of Ren’s skin for a few moments.

‘Hux..?’ Ren’s voice sounds small and fragile, echoing around the little empty hut and inside of Hux’s ears. Hux comes back to himself with a jolt - remembering where he is, remembering his own arousal. He can’t act like this, he knows, can’t be gentle like this. This wasn’t what they were like before, too hard and with too many teeth.

He coughs, before beginning to move again, down Ren’s body – following the curve of his spine. Ren’s skin is as smooth and milky white as he remembers, the broad expanse of his torso marred only by the puckered and twisted scars that sit low on his gut – still angry and red but safe and healed, Hux reminds himself forcefully. He’d seen Ren back then in the snow, thought that he’d been dead – there was so much blood. They’d been fucking for a while then and Hux had thought…

He pushes the memories away, trying to stop the feeling brewing in his chest. Instead, he gives in to the temptation, raking his nails roughly down Ren’s perfect skin and listening to Ren howl, twisting over the mattress, as Hux smirks. Hux, even in exile, keeps his nails filed short with military precision.

‘I will mark him instead,’ Hux thinks before his brain dissolves into pure feeling. Pure lust. ‘I will show that what he enjoys. That he’s mine, even if his heart belongs to them.’  

He reaches for the pot of salve again, coating his fingers liberally before he reaches for Ren’s hip. Ren jerks in response, bucking around his fingertips and sending out a soft kick that hits Hux square in the gut – knocking the air from him. He hisses, tightening the grip of his fingers in warning, as he slides his fingers to Ren’s opening.

He circles, teasing just for a moment, before pushing one through the ring of muscle gently – not wanting to push his luck with Ren too far, in case he received another foot to the gut. Ren moans – long and low as his entire body pitches forward, and Hux must hold him still with the grip on Ren’s hip. He works quickly, near hypnotised by the tight heat around his fingers, listening to Ren’s gasps and grunts for any sign of displeasure. 

Hux adds another finger, muffling his groan into his own arm as he feels Ren clench around him. This he remembers, from both positions – the burn that edges on pain rather than pleasure as well as the feeling that came from looking down at Ren in this position, moaning shamelessly. But, Hux knows, there’s no time to waste when they’re like this when they’re playing this game.

‘So needy,’ he hisses as he pulls his fingers free, drawing a satisfying groan from Ren that just proves his point. He tests gently – beginning to slowly thrust his fingers in-and-out of Ren’s hole, in swift and efficient motions. Ren hisses at first but soon quiets, soft moans slipping from between his lips.

Hux slips his other hand away from Ren’s hip, down to his own cock and strokes himself firmly, eyes slipping tightly closed, just to take the edge off – the pressure that has become unbearable. The relief is immediate if not complete, so Hux is able to move his hand away from his cock and grasp Ren’s hip again. 

Ren feels loose enough around his fingers – as he tests thrusting and scissoring them with clinical precision, not worrying about how rough he’s being. Ren’s moans have turned to sighs which tells him all that he needs to know – Ren is ready and soon Ren will grow impatient. Hux removes his fingers with a sudden motion that draws a gasp from Ren and leans forward, covering Ren with his body – a thin shadow of modesty. Their size difference is painfully evident as Hux stretches trying to find a comfortable grip around Ren’s shoulder.

Once he’s comfortable, giving Ren the barest hint of a warning with a squeeze to his shoulder, Hux thrusts forward into Ren’s inviting heat – seating himself to the hilt within Ren. Ren howls, his hole squeezing tightly around Hux and it’s almost too much for him, he almost comes then and there. The heat, the pressure, the beautiful noises Ren is making, but he grits his teeth against the feeling, keeping still for a few moments so that his orgasm doesn’t feel quite so close. Then he pulls back once – almost all the way out, Ren keening with his movement, before pushing brutally forward once again.

He thrusts with a quick and efficient rhythm, Ren’s whole body scooting forward with each movement of his hips. While Hux huffs gently, worrying Ren’s freckled and pale skin between his lips and teeth to muffle anything louder, Ren grunts and moans freely – seeming more desperate with every sound that passes his lips.

The noise of their moaning and of the springs in the bed squeaking are the only sounds that fill the hut. It’s a feedback loop – Ren’s moans and grunts sending Hux further to the edge, which makes him thrust harder and more unevenly, making Ren moan louder and more breathily. Ren starts rocking insistently back into Hux’s thrust, ass bumping against Hux’s hips as if he’s trying to take Hux’s cock even deeper, even harder than he is already.

‘So desperate,’ Hux says, intending to be smug. But he must be more desperate than even he’d thought, as the words come out soft and breathy. He feels his cheeks heating even more than they already are.

‘Shut up Hux,’ Ren snarls back between quiet moans, not doing any better at hiding his pleasure than Hux. That at least raises Hux’s spirits, has him reaching around Ren’s hips and sliding his hand around Ren’s cock – slick with precum.

It only takes a few strokes before Ren bucks in his grip, grinding his hips back against Hux’s cock and arching his back with a strangled gasp as his come spills over Hux’s hand and down onto the sheets. He stays there shivering for a few moments as, Hux assumes, the last of his orgasm fades, Hux biting down hard into the meat of his own lip as Ren’s hole clenches around him.

The heat and the warmth are too much, and Hux pulls free of Ren’s now pliant body just in time to come all over the backs of Ren’s thighs. Finally, they collapse together, a tangle of sweat and sticky limbs, both heaving as they try to catch their breath. The night closes in around them as the last scraps of daylight fade from the room, the heat of the day chilling the sweat that covers Hux’s skin.

Hux is still basking in the afterglow when Ren speaks, his words cutting through the silence that has settled thickly over the hut. It’s so quick, out of nowhere, that Hux doesn’t even have time to panic – a small blessing.

‘I finished the repairs today,’ he says and Hux can feel the rumbles of his voice from Ren’s chest against his own. ‘I’ll be ready to leave tomorrow. You don’t need to worry about me anymore.’

Hux tries his best to swallow the sting of hurt. This was what he’d wanted after all. Hux rolls over, away from Ren and his tempting warmth, and tries to sleep. The deadline is set, this is the end of the line. The end of them.


	3. Chapter 3

Everything is bright. Hux opens his eyes, blinking once, twice.

He recognises his surroundings immediately – the sleek consoles and panels, the dark and fitted uniform when he looks down at himself, the figures moving around him and to his right a woman with a crop of pale blonde hair and armour that twinkles like the stars. The surface of a planet takes up all of the viewscreens ahead of him – a desert world, with dust billowing across the surface like clouds.

Jakku. He blinks the last of the sleep from his eyes. There was… there was a battle…? Something, against the skin of his chest, burns.

‘It’s been a trying time,’ his aide to his left grovels, bowing his head in submission so that, Hux hopes, he misses Hux’s jolt of shock. He hadn’t noticed the man there.

‘He doesn’t want to be punished for letting me sleep,’ Hux thinks with a smirk at the man’s patheticness, ‘but he also didn’t want to get punished for waking me up.’ Still, he finds that his treacherous cheeks heat with embarrassment. Surely he hadn’t messed up his stims had he? He distantly remembers taking his usual dose with a mug of Caf for breakfast, earlier.

The dream is still fresh in his mind – the planet in the outer rim, the hut and his little garden, Kylo Ren and his soft hair and pink cheeks and sad, conflicted eyes. He feels his cheeks heating at just the thought of the dream, of what he and Ren had been doing even if they’ve fucked here plenty of times. It was different somehow, Ren was different.

‘Sir,’ Phasma’s voice cuts through the silence and Hux turns to face her, ‘there’s a communication on the subspace channel for you. It’s Kylo Ren, on the surface, he’s demanding to speak to you.’

‘I’ll take it at my console,’ he says, inclining his head a few inches. Perhaps it’s the dream, still so fresh in his mind, but he finds himself strangely eager to see and speak to Ren. He strides the few steps to his overbearing, grand console – right at the focal point of the bridge

 ‘Hux,’ the voice crackles from the screen, even without the vocoder. The sound is familiar. The image is distorted, but Hux can just make out Ren’s pale face – if not in detail. ‘Hux, save me,’ Ren’s voice is hoarse as if he’s been shouting.

‘Ren, slow down,’ Hux says, rubbing at his temples with one hand. He can feel a headache coming on.

‘Set me free!’ Ren screams.

 

Hux wakes up with a gasp, clawing at the pillow. He feels like he’s been screaming - his throat is rough and sore

But Ren is sleeping peacefully beside him – his hair fanning out over the pillow, his mouth slack and there are two points of colour, high on his cheekbones from where the heat of the twin stars is starting to seep into the hut. Hux must’ve been silent then.

The dream is still fresh in his mind, more lucid than any of the other times – that remain vague and shapeless shadows in the very corner of his mind. This time the dream is as clear as the memory of them sitting together the night before, staring up at the sky. As clear as the taste of Ren’s skin on his tongue and the sounds that had poured from Ren’s lips.

He shudders, panic receding a little, replaced with determination.

The dream doesn’t matter, he tells himself. Today is the day – the day when Ren will leave and the day when Hux will escape. Hux hopes that he will see Ren again when he is the Galatic Emperor just to see Ren’s look of shame and to gloat over Ren being wrong – Ren choosing the wrong side. But this is balanced in equal measures by his fear of seeing Ren again – of the weakness that Ren brings out in him with that soft and possessive feeling Ren sparks in Hux’s heart.

He has already shown Ren quite enough mercy, Hux decides as he swings his legs silently off of the bed and stands. He has given Ren the path, the guidance he was so desperately seeking. Return to the Resistance, leave Hux to rot. Ren’s heart was never his, as he had thought, as Ren’s betrayal of him had shown.

He pads quickly across the room, pausing for a few moments when he reaches the bathroom door to survey the room, for what he hopes might be the last time. He forces himself to turn away, to shuffle into the bathroom quickly as something stings at the corners of his eyes. His freedom feels so close.

For the first time since Ren had arrived, Hux reaches for the tin of wax stowed with his shaving supplies. He spreads it evenly through his hair with neat, practised strokes of his comb. When he has finished, he risks a glance into the mirror. The reflection that stares back at him is cold and pale, all stern and unforgiving lines. He breathes a sigh of relief, before testing out a smirk. The thin lips curve, bearing just a hint of teeth – smug and dismissive. Perfect.

He feels like himself again.

Ren is still asleep when he leaves, curled into the patch of the bed Hux had been sleeping in. Hux makes sure to grab a container of berries, a slice of bread leftover from the day before and a flask filled with cool water into a backpack, slipping his blaster alongside them – despite his grudging and newfound trust in Ren, he can’t risk leaving his only weapon just laying around. He sets off towards the mountain without even a backwards glance.

He ignores the growls of his stomach as he walks, even as the climb up the mountain path becomes tough and the suns slowly rise in the sky. The slight hum of the field generator is his only companion, driving him forward until he finds it’s source – hidden away just inside the mouth of a natural cave, shaded and cool.

He sets his pack down at the entrance and scrambles over to where he knows the generator box is, half hidden behind an overhang of rock. The cave is deceptive – the smooth stone walls at the entrance quickly turn jagged towards the back, as it snacks down further into the mountain. Hux hasn’t investigated where the tunnel leads, sticking only to the main chamber. Even he hadn’t had the courage to slip down the claustrophobically dark passage that seemed to suck away all the surrounding light.

He keys in the subspace code, leaning in close to his makeshift microphone. He wastes no time – as soon as the generator makes a clicking sound, to signal that the signal has been connected, he feeds in the coordinates – with slow, practised speech to make sure that no mistakes are made.

The response is immediate as if Lynx has been waiting next to their receiver, expecting Hux’s call. ‘The ship is on its way. It’s my own personal ship so take care of her. She will be with you in a few of your hours.’ Hux smiles. He has always appreciated efficiency.

Even though his escape seems to near that he thinks he can take it, he doesn’t let his eagerness overtake him. Hux sits in the mouth of the cave, staring out across the landscape below and slowly picks at his makeshift breakfast – he will need his strength for what’s to come, after all. He chews a mouthful of berries thoughtfully. Their flavour is a jumble of sweet and sour bursting across his tongue as his teeth break their skin.

The hut is a dot in the distance, half-hidden behind a dune he had climbed. No smoke rises from the chimney, no light shines from the windows – although he wouldn’t be able to tell in the daylight anyway. Everything is still and quiet, like Hux is the only one here, the only man alive. He almost chokes on the berries in his mouth at the thought, their flavour turning sickly and overripe. That thought it almost worse than the thought of Ren, that makes his heart pound and flutter for a different reason. Nobody else means nobody to rule over, nobody to bow to his own brilliance.

‘Right,’ he says aloud as if that will give it more weight – like a stop at the end of a sentence, written in dark black ink. Hux reaches for his bag, settling it over his thin shoulders. The Suns have risen high up into the sky and the desert is dry and still ahead, as Hux starts to pick his way back down the mountain and towards the Hut. He’s sure that’s where they will look for him - it’s the only real landmark on the planet, the only manmade building.

Despite the heat, he makes good time – walking with even, military-style steps while his brain is somewhere else in the galaxy. He’s always been fond of military marching, enjoyed the mindless order and beauty of it. It’s even more fitting, he thinks a sand gushes through the gaps in his boot when his freedom is so close.

Lynx isn’t his only contact, there are surely others that must’ve gone into hiding – unwilling to reveal their positions just to help him. In that way, Lynx is just braver than most. Or more reckless and greedier than the rest – willing to risk everything for power. That at least Hux can respect.

That’ll be his first move after he reaches whatever seedy bar Lynx is has hauled up in. He can see it in his mind now the smoke, the neon, the grimy counters and music that invades every sense. Lynx certainly was a little too predictable.

For a single moment, he wonders what Ren would think of such a place – Kylo Ren of royal birth in a smuggler’s bar is quite an idea. But he stops that thought in its tracks. He can’t afford to think of Ren anyway, no matter how much his chest aches. He pushes forward, past the barriers of tiredness and quickens his pace. 

Slowly, through the heat haze, Hux realises that there’s a black speck on the horizon. He blinks – once, twice, and even tries rubbing his eyes but the spot remains. In fact, he realises hardly daring to breathe, the spot is getting larger.

The air hisses involuntarily through his teeth, his pulse jumping in his throat. It’s a ship!

It’s like a weight has been lifted from him, Hux feels light and like he could run all the way back. Like he could take on anything – reforming the First Order alone, ruling the Galaxy. Like he could rip the crown straight from Organa’s hands.

He breaks into a run, eyes fixed on the ship and trusting his feet to guide him. He stumbles over rocks and the gnarled roots of plants, tumbling to his knees and pushing back up to his feet but never once taking his eyes off the ship.

As it gets closer, he manages to force his arms above his head, waving frantically even as this puts him even more off balance. The ship is dark and sleek and expensive looking – everything Lynx had promised that it would be. Hux sighs, imagining reclining into the plush seats. Maybe even having a sonic shower? Despite his efforts the ship seems to have spotted the hut instead, arcing away from Hux in a sweeping motion, it’s landing gear coming down.

The ship lands just a few meters from the hut, sending up a cloud of dust as it touches down while Hux is still scrambling over the final dune that separates them. He takes a moment to mourn for his vegetable garden, for the neatly arranged rows of plants – marrows, root vegetables, berries and leafy vegetables, all carefully tended by his own hand. His hard work is now covered in a layer of sand.  

He’s become too soft here, he thinks with disgust at himself, too nostalgic and attached. A few fruits and vegetables are nothing in the comparison to the destruction of Starkiller, and yet his heart aches the same.

‘The sooner I get out of here the better,’ he mumbles as he reaches the top of the sand dune, at last, fingers sinking into the heated sand. He digs in his heels and summons his last little bit of strength to break over the summit of the dune. He scrambles for a moment as his feet slide in the sand, heart pounding as he loses his balance and tumbles the rest of the distance.

Hux coughs up a mouthful of sand before dragging himself up to his feet and dusting himself off as best he can. He starts to frantically flatten his hair, combing the strands between his fingers in an attempt to tame the frizz and force it to lie flat again when he freezes – like a bantha that senses a hunt. The ship has landed and now figures are slowly advancing from one of the hatches – dressed all in black, helmets covering their heads. And any identifying features, Hux realises, fear dawning over him slowly.

They are all wearing heavy tactical armour and something deep inside of Hux, that survival instinct that has served him so well all of these years, tells him that he needs to hide. He ducks behind a small outcrop of rocks - swift and soundless, pressing himself flat to the surface. It’s cool against his palms but even that does nothing to calm him. Part of him thinks he’s overreacting,

_Where is Lynx anyway?_

‘There’s a heat signature over here,’ the figure's voices floats over to him, barely audible. ‘He’s over here, quickly!’

Hux’s stomach drops. He reaches for his blaster, practically ripping the backpack apart with the speed that he pulls it out – letting himself take one short, shuddering breath as he hears the click of the blaster powering up. Could these be more Assassin’s, he wonders as he tries to flatten himself even further into the rocks. They seem more coordinated and well-equipped than any of them had previously, but still, Hux clings to the gleam of hope that Assassin’s are what they are, instead of…

Before he can make a sound before he can even think he’s surrounded – black suited humanoids, each with a blaster aimed at him, are circling in towards him from all angles.

‘Lynx sends their regards,’ one of the figures says, voice distorted and robotic – eerily similar to a droid’s, through their helmets. Hux feels his heart stop, feels the all the heat drain from his face. The sweat pooling on his skin from the heat goes so cold that Hux is surprised it hasn’t turned to ice.

It’s like everything is spiralling out of control, like sand slipping through his fingers. His plan, his only hope has been crushed. Betrayal, betrayal, betrayal runs around his head like a mantra in time to the stuttered beating of his heart. _Useless._

His eyes sting with unshed tears and his knees feel weak, like at any second they might buckle from beneath him in one final humiliation. He can’t take it anymore.

‘How many times can I be knocked down?’ He thinks, with a sting of utter humiliation right down to his core. ‘What have I done to deserve this suffering?’ Killed thousands, he supposes. Tried to take over the Galaxy. Still, those seem to Hux like small and necessary events, compared to his own humiliation.

But Hux doesn’t have too much time to wallow in self-pity as one of the figures advances on him, weapon raised. Hux moves without thinking - without worrying that he’s outnumbered ten to one, all the years of Academy training and later of maintaining his position as he rose through the ranks, especially at such a young age, all kick into action at once.

Hux charges towards the figure advancing towards him, firing two neat shots into the figure's body before delivering a quick kick to their gut. As the figures fall, they fire their blaster straight up into the air – a pulse so bright that it sends Hux stumbling backwards. If that had hit him…

‘Stun only! Stun only!’ The first figure shouts, advancing towards Hux themselves now. It sounds so strange such an obviously emotional sound being flattened completely. ‘We’re supposed to take him alive!’ Hux grits his teeth. This is going to be tough.

He picks up a run again, trying to make his movements as unpredictable as he can and firing off two more blaster shots towards the closest figure. They too crumple to the floor with a grunt, but before Hux can be filled with triumph he’s being tackled from behind, thumping face down into the sand.

Something on the centre of his chest burns so hotly that Hux worries he’s been caught by blaster fire. But when he looks down for a split second there’s no blood – and he’s still breathing, after all, he’s still here.

 _‘Hux?’_ The voice comes out of nowhere – quiet as if coming across a long distance. But the low sound of it is familiar – a sound he thinks with more than a little shame at his own attachment, Hux would recognise anywhere. Kylo Ren.

‘Ren? Help me!’ He screams, screwing his eyes tightly shut but still the tears manage to slip passed his lashes and leaving tracks as they pour down his face. He’s truly losing his mind, he thinks, to call out for Ren of all people, who is most likely light years away already. Taking a deep breath, he pulls himself together, wiping the tears off on his sleeve.

‘This is no way to die,’ he whispers to himself, gritting his teeth and raising his blaster. He’s fought his way out of worse than this, he can do it again, he hopes feebly. He pushes himself back up to his feet, twisting quickly away from his attackers before raising his blaster and cracking it across one of their helmets – splitting it neatly in two. He pushes them back with a kick to the knee before shooting one close range shot into the unmoving target.

There’s no time for Hux to even gloat about his success as no sooner is his attacker crumpling to the floor completely still before another is on him – knocking the blaster clean out of his hand with one blow to his hand that has him screaming in shock. The bloom of pain is instant and terrible – shooting like a forest fire across his knuckles.

He falls to his knees, held up only by a hand grasping at the gaping collar of his tunic. Kriff. He snarls, twisting and turning with all his remaining strength like a wild beast. The tallest of the figures – the only one that has spoken so far, is holding him in place. The figures mask reveals nothing, remaining blank and faceless. Somehow this infuriates Hux even more than if the figure had been sneering at him.

Hux twists again, more wildly as he gathers his very last ounce of strength as a thick strand of hair flops across his face. The flash of a sabre is unforgettable, rivalling the suns for brightness. Red dances before Hux’s eyes, cutting neatly through the first figure who crumples to the ground. Sparks fly everywhere as if the sabre has become even more unstable than Hux remembers it.

Everything goes silent, as if in slow motion as two more of his attackers fall, crumpling just like their companions that Hux had neatly dispatched of. It’s like they all look together, half hypnotised by the light of the sabre – Hux and his attackers, their gazes moving in unison to this newcomer.

Ren stands triumphant next to the fallen bodies, his stance loose and relaxed as if they had been mere training dummies. But when Hux’d gaze lifts to Ren’s face he sees that Ren’s eyes are blazing, lit with a spark of _something._ And that’s when he knows - they can do this. He smirks, despite the pain and exhaustion threatening to overcome him. Together they can do this.

His attackers split – the few remaining squaring off against Ren while the tallest remains with him, their hand heavy on Hux’s shoulder holding him in place. That’s their first real mistake so far, in thinking that Ren is more dangerous just because he has giant, bright, sparkling laser sword. But Hux can work with that – being underestimated or overestimated when he needs to be, he’s used to these deceptions.

At that moment Ren lets out a roar, lunging heavily towards the five attackers with his sabre raised above his head. They are less careful with him than they have been with Hux, firing blaster shots as quickly as they can. Ren reflects each with ease, batting his sabre from side to side as if he’s in a training simulation. Hux watches entranced, feeling as smirk slowly twisting up the corners of his mouth, as Ren reaches forward with one hand catching a single blaster bolt in midair. He holds it there for only a second, curling his fingers as if testing his grip before sending it back towards the attacker, with a grunt of effort.

Hux takes that as his moment, as the attacker falls to the floor with a robotic shout. He moves as quickly as he can, supporting his weight on his palms and twisting his body so that he can deal a kick to the back of the figure’s knee. A robotic groan comes from inside of the helmet, the grip on Hux’s tunic loosening just enough that he can wriggle free.

He rolls away, towards the blaster that still lays on the ground and snatches it up. Without thinking, he closes his eyes and fires. There’s silence and he risks a glance, blinking his eyes open. The lead attacker is dead.

 

By the time he looks up again, there are only bodies. And Ren in the centre of them, chest heaving and face red. Adrenaline still pumping, Hux strides towards him – compelled by a need, something deep inside of him. The need isn’t soft or gentle, but relieved at least, to see Ren still standing.

‘How did you get here? How did you know?’ He can’t help but ask, voice getting higher and angrier with each word. Now that the fight is over and that they have both survived, the reality of the situation begins to dawn on him. That Ren was still here at all and then that he’d known Hux was in trouble when his ship should be at least a Klick away. It doesn’t make sense. Then he remembers the burning, the necklace jolting against his skin…

‘The necklace! It’s the necklace,’ the scream is ripped from his throat, his eyes burning with angry tears. ‘What have you done to me? What is this?’ He pulls the chain through his fingers, shaking the stone in Ren’s direction.

Ren flinches away, his face a picture of agony.

‘It’s a gift,’ Ren says, voice pinched and annoyed as if Hux is the problem. Hux snorts, hoping it sounds as incredulous as he aims it to be. Nothing with Ren is ever simple, it seems. ‘It wasn’t supposed to…’

‘What have you done to me, Ren? I don’t care about what it was ‘supposed’ to be like. What is it like? What have you done?’ He can hear his voice tearing at the edges, as his anger mixes with fear. If even Ren hadn’t had control of this, whatever it is, what hope is there for him?

‘It’s a Force stone,’ Ren snaps back. Hux opens his mouth to speak but Ren is quick to silence him, holding up the palm of one broad hand in Hux’s direction. ‘I didn’t expect it to have this effect though. I’ve been channelling away my anger, my darkness since I went with.. with Rey. I’ve been trying so hard to be good Hux, really I have,’ Ren says, rushing to soothe his words like the boys at the Academy had when they’d forgotten their homework. ‘I thought I was suppressing it but. But if what you’re saying is true it seems more like I’ve been channelling it. It seems like I’ve been sending it to a safe place, a place where that side of me felt safe. Into the stone, to be with you. Next to your heart, always.’ He ends awkwardly, shrugging his shoulders a little as if what he had just said was simple. Nothing to worry about.

Hux can’t do anything but sputter and feel his cheeks heat. Despite the desert heat he feels frozen to the spot, hardly able to process Ren’s words. The implications are terrible, awful, of what might have happened just because of Ren’s trivial wish to give Hux a trinket. But at the same time, something hot and possessive sparks in Hux’s gut. A force stone must be very rare and precious after all

‘You like me?’ He feels childish saying it like he’s been transported back to the Academy on Arkanis. He worries at a lose thread on the sleeve of his tunic, rubbing the rough material back and forth between his fingertips.

Ren stares at him for a moment, eyebrow raised and mouth a flat line. Hux burns under the scrutiny, feeling like he’s missing something.

‘Of course, I do,’ Ren mutters eventually, looking away as if he can barely say it. Still, it hits Hux like a physical force, knocking the air from his lungs.

‘Ren,’ he says, pausing to wet his lips nervously. He hadn’t planned to do this but then again nothing today seems to be going as planned. Might as well jump off the deep end, he supposes.

‘Will you be loyal to me? Will you form a new First Order with me, rule over the Galaxy together or die trying? Do you swear?’ He says, chest heaving with anticipation. This is it, this is the moment where Hux feels his own paths forking – one where Ren joins him and one where he is alone again. Just like he always has been.

Ren stares back at him, eyes wide as if he’s startled. He doesn’t answer. Hux’s palms begin to sweat.

‘Do you swear?’ Hux snarls, although it doesn’t feel like he says it himself. The sound rings in his ears but still, he wonders if he’d said it out loud. He hadn’t meant to be so desperate, to be anything but his usual self but now he feels like he’s going to fall apart if Ren doesn’t answer.  Like this is the most important thing in the Universe. This one question.

‘I swear,’ Ren says, frantic and eyes wide. Hux takes mercy on him and pulls Ren’s earlobe between his teeth, just a hint of teeth that makes Ren hiss, as a reward. Hux pulls back, unable to stop the smirk from pulling up his lips, soothing over the marks with his tongue.

‘You’re not Ben Solo, you’ve never been Ben Solo,’ he whispers, perching up onto his knees so that the words are warm against the shell of Ren’s ear. ‘You’re Kylo Ren. Cruel, self-pitying and selfish, don’t try and fool yourself.’

‘Ren!’ He says sharply, pulling Ren in by the collar. He’s surprised at how little strength it takes – as if Ren wants to be close to him, wants to yield to Hux.

‘You’ve never been good. They’re good people – Rey and Organa, they’ll fight for whatever misguided thing they think is right, they want what’s best for the people. But not you, not us. We’ve got good in us – our way is right, order is the only way. But we want the power too, all for ourselves.’

‘You might be conflicted but let me tell you,’ he licks his lips, readying his final blow with baited breath, ‘You’re just as terrible as I am. Don’t let the girls misguided kindness fool you. I know you better than she ever would.’

He imagines them together – Rey’s sweet and smiling face, always with that little line of determination etched between her brows, and Kylo smiling too, his hair blowing softly in the breeze. The scene changes, grows dark, lit only by red flickering lights. His mirror images smirk is dangerous, laced with blood and so is Ren’s – they kiss, he yields, Ren yields, neither yields. They reach the top, sit side by side on a golden throne and embrace, Ren’s hand spanning the width of mirror Hux’s waist. He opens his eyes.

‘Do you hear me?’ He hisses, leaning in close so that his words ghost across Ren’s chapped lips. Beneath his hands Ren shudders, breath rasping from between his teeth in one gust.

‘Yes,’ Ren rumbles, his eyes getting darker – if that’s even possible. Now it’s Hux’s turn to shiver. This is the Ren he’d wanted, the Ren he’d missed and now that he has him back, Hux feels completely overwhelmed.

Thankfully, Ren steps away and combs one large hand through his hair. Hux finds himself watching, mouth going dry before he forces himself to look away. The silence is overwhelming now as the adrenaline fades from his system and the reality of the situation dawns on him. Betrayed by his only active contact, marooned yet again with Kylo Ren. The thing between them, that crackles like the sparks from a control baton.

‘I guess we should,’ Ren says, slow and awkwardly, dipping his head in the direction of the sleek black ship.

‘Ah, yes,’ he says, meeting Ren’s eyes for a moment before striding onboard. At least Lynx was true to their word here – the ship is luxurious, although less so than Hux’s previous First Order Shuttle. Still, he finds that it’s perfectly adequate – the inside is spacious, sleek and black with plush looking seats.

It will do for now, he supposes. For them. It’s such a strange thought that he examines it like a precious artefact – with interest and care. To think of them as more than bitter rivals, as one force against the rest of the Galaxy.

It’s been a long time coming Hux realises.

They take their places at the twin pilots chairs. Hux begins working on the computer immediately – having the advantage of understanding at least a little of Lynx’s systems (all custom-made to fit their own little quirks and deeply encoded). But before he can get too far – only having opened the ships navigation systems and started their ascent for the planet, Ren clears his throat, obviously wanting to catch Hux’s attention. With a heavy, put-upon sigh Hux rolls his eyes over to look at Ren, cocking one eyebrow.

‘Maybe you could, I don’t know, grow your hair out a little,’ Ren says, teeth worrying at his lower lip, ‘it suited you.’

‘Not a chance!’ Hux snorts dismissively, even as he feels his cheeks betraying him – turning hot and red. He turns back to his console, wearing the blush that he can feel blooming over his cheeks defiantly. He elects to ignore Ren’s snicker and instead, he keys in their coordinates to the ships interface. The string of numbers is familiar and brings a familiar ache along with it. But he thinks he can handle it – for now and with Ren at his side. Arkanis may have been his childhood prison, but he did have connections there – hopefully ones that were more trustworthy than Lynx.

As the planet disappears, becoming nothing more than a yellow speck on the viewscreen Hux sighs and reaches of Ren’s hand. Their fingers tangled together easily, palms brushing. This is the beginning of their story, of their future. Together.


End file.
